Visual C++ - what are we doing next?
Many of my current ISVs use C# and VB.NET as their main development languages but there remains a huge base of Visual C++ code deployed as part of ISV solutions (does this sound familiar?) and in turn there is plenty of Visual C++ development still happening. Microsoft is itself a great example of this - products such as Office and Windows were built as "native code" using Visual C++ long before the creation of .NET. ISVs have been asking me "when will Microsoft give Visual C++ some real loving?". The good news is the Visual C++ team have been thinking around this topic since the Summer of 2006 and shared some of their current thinking on Channel 9. Well worth a watch if your company has a large C++ codebase. Ultimately it boils down to:
- Increase our level of investment in native libraries e.g. MFC support for latest versions of Windows.
- Provide interop technologies that allow easy mixing of native and managed code e.g. marshalling data types between managed and native and STL for managed types
- Modernize the Visual C++ development environment e.g. working with very large native code bases
I know the team are interested in speaking with UK ISVs that have a significant investment in Visual C++. Please contact me if you would like to explore this possibility further.
UPDATED: Great link to more details https://blogs.msdn.com/vcblog/archive/2007/04/10/visual-c-orcas-feature-specifications-online.aspx (don't know why I didn't check there at the time!)
Comments
Anonymous
April 17, 2007
I would benefit more from more development and documentation of WTL, instead of MFC. ANSWER: Good question Jeff - if you watch the video they do talk about their plans for ATL which sound promising.Anonymous
November 19, 2007
Back in April I blogged about our initial thoughts on the future of Visual C++ . Soma shared some moreAnonymous
November 19, 2007
Back in April I blogged about our initial thoughts on the future of Visual C++ . Soma shared some more