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I would like to download a newer version of VS Express, but It seems to me that VS 2012 includes Basic, C# and C++ as well, however I only need C++...
Nevertheless I can download VS 2010 which includes only C++. (Visual C++ Express)
So I don't want to waste hard disk with unnecessery packages. Does 2012 include all these languages? What would you do in my place?
VS2012 is the first version of Visual Studio where the Express editions are no longer broken out by language preference. Guessing at a reason for this, it might have something to do with the proliferation of target platforms between these Express editions. New in VS2012 is the distinction between the Desktop, Windows 8 and Phone editions. If they would have kept the language choices, that would have added 8 more editions to choose from.
Be sure to pick the right one. With high odds that you want the Desktop edition unless you specifically want to target the Windows 8 Store or Phone. VB.NET, C# will come along with the ride, JS if you pick Store or Phone.
You could delete the VB and C# subdirectories after installing it but that will recover very little disk space. These languages share a lot of the plumbing in VS. Especially since C++ got integrated into the build system. Their compilers are not actually part of VS, they are part of .NET
Each Express edition is for a single language/purpose.
The full Visual Studio, however, combines everything into one big package.
EDIT: Chris, who's using it, notes in a comment that the Dekstop edition of Visual Studio Express indeed supports multiple languages.
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I am just starting to learn how to use Qt in C++. They have a option to use a standalone Qt creator as well as an addon for Visual Studio. I have Visual Studio Community 2015.
The question is, is there any disadvantages of using the addon for Visual Studio over just coding in Qt creator?
UPDATE: How do i use Qt in my Visual Studio 2015 projects?
It seems the below is a bit outdated already considering using Qt extension for VS2015. But I have not personally tried myself yet and suspect Qt Creator still have its advantage as below.
The advantages of Qt Visual Studio Add-In:
It lets us to use better debugger from Visual Studio while working with Qt project
It lets us to easily do the remote debugging by running the executable on other system or VM
Many developers used to Visual Studio
The disadvantages of Qt Visual Studio Add-In:
Very unreliable project import, makes us to fix things manually. And not all add-in versions are good: we still use 1.2.3 because of that
Not convenient with adding file to the project etc. We usually add to and then re-import the project from Qt .pro file
Visual Studio builds the code much slower than Qt Creator does (roughly the proportion between nmake and jom tools, jom parallelizes the build)
Visual Studio must be higher than Express (e.g. Ultimate)
The Qt Visual Studio Add-in allows programmers to create, build, debug
and run Qt applications from within non-Express versions of Microsoft
Visual Studio 2008, 2010, and 2012 (*newer versions also covered).
The rest of advantages and disadvantages can be considered individual developer preferences. I like Qt Creator for its ability to quickly find any definition under the cursor (press Ctrl and hover the mouse cursor and select) while MS Visual Studio does that but not as easy and surprisingly too frequently fails to find the definition (they fix it for years and maintain huge index files for the source code while Qt Creator does not build such files).
And for me the main disadvantage of Qt Creator is CDB from Windows SDK or maybe another external one vs. way better debugger in Visual Studio including remote. So I debug complex issues with Visual Studio but I write the code and quickly test it with Qt Creator.
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I downloaded and installed Visual Studio Express 2013 for Windows Desktop, and now I want to start it. I expected I could just go to Metro and type, but nothing (relevant) comes up! I tried to find the installation folder but can't find it. There are a few versions of Visual Studio but none of them say "Express 2013". Despite how I sound, I'm not a complete idiot when it comes to computers, but I just can't seem to open Visual Studio Express 2013 for Windows Desktop, well, the C++ IDE anyway. I have read the official "Getting Started" guides but they don't tell me how to actually open it! Why can't it be as easy as opening IntelliJ IDEA or PyCharm?
Ok for all who have trouble opening VS you can do it like so:
In the search area of Start type run and in the run window type devenv.
You can also press Win + R to open the run window.
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Is MFC only available with Visual Studio, and not Visual C++ Express?
(2 answers)
Closed 9 years ago.
I'm developing with an API and the API requires the afxsock.h among other afx... headers. After searching online, it seems that my VS Express isn't enough, so I looked to purchase the product at microsoft. Unfortunately it's 700$ and as a beginning programmer, it makes no sense for me to drop that on 1 project which I am using to teach myself c++. (I.e. I still don't know if I want to program long term in C++ or another language).
In any case, I was wondering if there was some sort of work around to get the afx (or more appropriately the MFC) files?
Note that I have Windows 8, Visual Studio 2012, and I've downloaded the Windows Development Kit for Windows 8, but still can't compile because I'm getting missing afx errors.
The AFX prefix stands for Application Framework Extensions, which was the original name for the MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes) libraries. The file names were set in stone before the name was changed to MFC, and it was too late to change them.
So you need MFC in order to use those headers. Unfortunately, the Express versions of Visual Studio do not include MFC (or ATL). You can only develop MFC applications using the Standard, Professional, or higher editions of Visual Studio.
If you are a student, you have a couple of great options:
You can can join Microsoft's DreamSpark program, which is free to students and entitles you to some great free downloads, including VS 2012 Professional, VS 2010 Professional, and recent server versions of Windows.
Alternatively, you can join the IEEE for a very low cost. The
IEEE student membership entitles you to download many Microsoft tools, including the Ultimate editions of Visual Studio. See this page for more information. (Although that page mention VS 2010, VS 2012 is actually available.)
Otherwise, you will have to either buy Visual Studio Standard/Professional outright, or join MSDN.
Alternatively, you could use the winsock2 API, which is part of the Windows SDK rather than MFC. Get started with the documentation here. The Windows SDK is what you're getting when you downloaded the "Windows Development Kit for Windows 8". It includes everything you need to link to native Win32 libraries, but it does not include the MFC framework.
In addition to the IEEE "student membership" option that someone else linked to, you may want to consider Microsoft's BizSpark program which will give you access to more than just Visual Studio. I do not know if you qualify for it, but it's worth looking into.
With that said, it's time to step onto the soapbox and add some commentary: I understand the problem of API of choice having a dependency on MFC, but realistically speaking developing a trading program is neither particularly easy nor a good place for you to start. In addition, starting with MFC is probably not a good idea unless you want to specifically focus on becoming an MFC developer. If you are set on C++ you would be better served focusing your efforts on learning C++11. Or at least learning it first. Once you are comfortable with that, then you can focus on learning GUI programming using any of the many frameworks available.
Just my $0.02.
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I'm from a Java school, but I'd like to get my hands dirty in C/C++ development as well. Can you suggest:
a Lightweight beginner IDE [Eg: JCreator for Java] (Simple and small download)
a full-blown advanced IDE [Eg: Eclipse for Java] (Every feature and huge download)
should I use GCC or other compilers?
Thanks a lot guys!
1) a Lightweight beginner IDE [Eg: JCreator for Java] (Simple and small download)
Eclipse with CDT (~40 MB download) or Visual Studio 2008 Express edition (2.6 MB download for installer and then tons of stuff that it'll pull from the net) -- it's free. Also, get the SP1. But, I still suggest that you take a look at Visual Studio.
2) a full-blown advanced IDE [Eg: Eclipse for Java] (Every feature and huge download)
Eclipse with CDT (~40 MB download) or Visual Studio 2008 Professional (if you are going to pay).
3) should I use GCC or other compilers?
Yes and no. Depends on your needs. GNU g++ is great to get started with. However, hooking up with CDT may prove to be difficult.
If you intend to do professional Windows programming in near future, it is best to buy the Visual Studio 2008 Pro (and install SP1) and get used to it.
If you have to do it in Vista and if it is Microsoft platform-specific, then there is no better full-blown IDE than Visual Studio. You can download Visual Studio Express Edition for C++ development as a lighter IDE (Not that light though but it is free). Eclipse with GCC works great as well if you want to go cross-platform.
I suggest Code::Blocks. Remember to download the codeblocks-8.02mingw-setup.exe, it includes the GCC compiler and GDB debugger. With it you're ready to start :)
I agree that there is no better Windows IDE for C++ development than Visual Studio. Apart from the free Visual Studio Express, you might also want to consider Visual Studio Standard. It costs about $200 in the US and, among other advantages, allows you to use third-party plugins such as Visual Assist. Those will help you speed up your development even further.
For really light weight, you can go without any IDE. Grab Cygwin, install GCC and start writing code in any text editor (E.g. Crimson Editor). In fact, I suggest you try this to get an idea of how C++ programs are actually compiled behind the scene of an IDE.
You can get Visual Studio Express C++, which is a good package for a beginner. Probably easiest to get started with this.
You can get Eclipse with CDT and use the Cygwin GCC tools, but this is inferior to Visual Studio in certain ways.
Then there's CodeBlock, which I've heard good things about, but don't know how it compares to Visual Studio or Eclipse/CDT.
Do you want to just learn C++ or use C++ to interact with Vista components? The title of your question says Vista but your description is asking which IDE to use.
I agree using Visual Studio C++ Express is a great place to start. It will basically give you the foundation for writing Windows Apps with C++. You said you're from the JAVA world and if you have experience with C# or VB.NET, don't expect all the designers and wizards to be here in C++. Anyone who had done C++ GUI work knows that this isn't always the case. Not to discourage you, there are designers, just not for everything.
If you want to learn how to interact with Windows through C++, the VC++ main site is here, and the how-do-i videos here, also download the feature pack if you haven't installed SP1 yet is here, besides ribbonizing MFC, they've included Boost in the STL, which is awesome. And finally, the guided tours are here.
Also, you don't technically need MFC to write GUI applications, you can call Win32 API functions directly, but MFC is a foundation and will help.
That should get your started. If you need more help, just post a comment.
I agree with the posters above. For microsoft platform specific development, the Visual Studio environment is by far the best. The express editions are nice, but if I remember correctly, they do't come with the win32 SDK, so you still can't make windows GUI programs with it (officially)...
If all you want is to learn C++, gcc/g++ is a great free compiler and an editor with syntax highlighting should be enough. I find an IDE only adds value for larger projects, for simple test/learning projects and IDE is not that neccessary.
You mentioned that that you know about Eclipse for Java. If you have any experience with Eclipse for Java then you can leverage most of that experience towards your C/C++ development by using Eclipse's CDT ( C/C++ Development Toolkit ) plugin.
I strongly encourage using Eclipse with CDT over using Visual Studio because any time spent learning Visual Studio will be lost if you ever want to do any Linux development.
...
I forgot to mention that Eclipse with CDT has all the important features that full version VS has ( and probably more ) ... but doesn't cost any money.
I am rather partial to the Code Gear (formerly Borland) C++ compiler line which I have been using for years.
They have recently release a free 'community' addition called Turbo Explorer
Netbeans is also very good IDE with many futures in it.
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I need to know where i can get a free version of C and C++ compilers for Windows Vista. Many of the versions i have tried are not working in fullscreen mode.
Please take a look at visual studio 2008 express edition.
It is a freeware IDE and compiler from Microsoft for C#, VB.Net, C++, SQL, and web.
The Express line is a lightweight version of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 product.
I believe it has full screen support in the IDE.
See the wikipedia page for further reading.
Have you tried MinGW? It's a command-line compiler. I don't have Vista, so I can't test it, but it should work.
Visual Studio Express 2008 if free. It's lacking some specific features that might be a requirements for you. You can check here.
I'm not sure what you mean by "not working in fullscreen mode". Can you be more explicit about what you have tried and exactly how it hasn't worked?
I would recommend trying out the on of thew Microsoft Visual Express packages. http://www.microsoft.com/express/.
I found them very good for trying things out especially for a single developer who is not too concerned about deployment and getting a product to market.
I am not sure if it works for Vista but I can't see why it wouldn't work.
You can try the following to see if they work on Vista.
http://nuwen.net/mingw.html#download (comes with Boost with all the libs already built)
http://www.tdragon.net/recentgcc/
Apart from the aforementioned MSVS and MinGW, you could try Eclipse CDT and Code::Blocks. While MSVS, especially with Visual Assist (costs money), is quite a powerful and convenient tool, the other IDEs have the benefit of working with more OSes. And yes, they’re powerful and convenient, too.
Update: True, these are IDEs, not compilers. For C++ under MS Windows, they both use MinGW as the compiler. But it’s my understanding that it’s IDEs that the OP needs.