mindless ramblings

I just got myself MS Visual Studio 2005 and I’ve been trying to get the hang of developing applications in C++ and in particular, using MFC. It’s quite a big jump from programming in Java. Writing Windows apps are complex and intricate matters. Just a basic “Hello World” app requires a substantial number of lines of code.

However, once you get the basic program structure and stuff down, it’s actually quite user friendly. You can rapidly create skeleton code for running single-document interface (SDI) and multiple-document interface (MDI) apps with several mouse clicks. In addition, I must say the resource editor is a great feature. You can edit menu bars, icons, keyboard accelerators and even the about box from within the VS 2005 IDE. Thus you can add all these essential features right into your app without having to resort to external applications to design icons etc.

Those of you who have used Eclipse know how efficient the enviroment is (although IntelliJ IDEA appears to be pretty good too). The intellisense built into Eclipse is just so much better than VS 2005, but I suppose it’s a half-decent try by Microsoft. However, the best thing about Java and Eclipse for me is the incremental compilation, together with the suggestions for fixes for errors in your code. I do know you can get such features from third-party add-ins such as ReSharper, but it’s not free and only works with the full version of VS 2005 and not the Express Editions.

I’m going to keep going in VS 2005 for now, hopefully I’ll find some useful add-ins to improve my efficiency and get some decent apps going ASAP!