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Heard about "the Joy of Six"? As you guessed right, Microsoft has started pushing Visual C++ 6.0 into the market. VC++ 6.0 is due to hit the retail market in September. Developers at Microsoft have been working on this version of the product for the past 18 months. VC++ 6.0 is supposed to be "very fast, displays information in a no-nonsense fashion, and provides straightforward access to the core Windows architecture, including fantastic Internet development functionality." There are a good number of new features packed in this version. Prominent among them being the Edit and Continue debugging, IntelliSense technology, enhanced ATL Object Wizards, and Dynamic ClassView updating. After a casual look, as one of my friends pointed out, at least in GUI enhancements, it looks like VC++ and VB will converge in near feature. (Not to forget the words of COM guru Dale Rogerson: "if VC++ is bad, VB is nightmare!"). If you've ever seen the IntelliSense functionality in VB, you may have wondered when Microsoft would add it to VC++. Well, it's here. IntelliSense completes code statements, with a full display of class members, function prototypes, identifier declarations, and comments both available and selectable as you type. Microsoft's introduction of Dynamic ClassView updating in VC++ 6.0 is a meaningful improvement in the quality of information now available to developers. In AppWizard, including Document/View architecture support is now optional (till now this has been the default). You can now choose Active Document Containment, another VC++ 6.0 feature, which creates a document with a fully realized application interface. This is designed to incorporate functionality from other applications such as Word or Excel, with complete control over the page but without need to generate multiple frames. In one of the final steps of the AppWizard, you can now select CHtmlView as your Base View class. This allows display of both HTML and DHTML along with ActiveX controls. The handful of COM wrapper frameworks (like Active Template Library) that exist in VC++ 5.0 are perceived as being either too difficult for beginning and intermediate developers or too cumbersome for the MFC experts. Now in VC++ 6.0, the ATL Object Wizard resolves the myriad interface definitions that needed to be assigned for clean COM/MFC communication. This is a solid enhancement in the new version. Edit and Continue is intended to significantly reduce the amount of time it takes to recompile after each code edit. With VC++ 6.0, you have the ability to view the DLLs your application is loading during the debug process by selecting Debug|Modules. These two features combined should speed up the process of debugging altogether. Microsoft VC++ 6.0 claims up to 30% faster compiler throughput in Debug builds and up to 15% faster compiler throughput in non-Debug builds compared to the previous version. It also claims a 35% reduced code size. VC++ 6.0 linker can create code to manage delay loading of DLLs until they are actually executed. However, these claims are not yet confirmed. If you have reached this far, I should say that you are really interested to know more about VC++ 6.0. If you want more information about this the Microsoft web site must be the best place to go. You can have look at VCDJ site also for reviews. After going through these sites, and some booklets send out by Microsoft, I have only one question to ask you: are you about to start coding your application in VC++ 5.0? Then, why can't you wait for another month? After all, VC++ 6.0 is worth waiting for! (Written on September 3, 1998)
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