Visual Studio® 2010 All-in-One For Dummies®

Chapter 3. Building Visual C++ Applications

In This Chapter

• Taking a fresh look at C++

• Peeking at the Visual C++ application wizards

• Creating managed and unmanaged applications

• Referencing external libraries in your C++ projects

Visual C++ has been around for quite some time, and C++, the core language on which Visual C++ is based, is even older! (C++ has been around since the mid-1980s and still exists in many legacy applications and even in new applications where performance is a factor.) Just because Visual C++ is, shall I say, mature doesn't mean that it can't hold its own against more modern programming languages. Many folks still use Visual C++ when they need to perform tasks for which performance is of utmost importance. Or, they also use Visual C++ to take advantage of the huge pile of C++ code they've developed over the years. Many developers prefer to develop managed code using C++ because of the ease of interoperability with existing unmanaged C++ code.

This chapter gives you the scoop on Visual C++ and shows you how to create Visual C++ applications by using Visual Studio 2010. Fortunately, Microsoft has made great strides in updating Visual C++ for standards conformance. The C++ standards committee is actively working on the new language features for the C++0x standard, which will offer exciting new features to the language.

Getting to Know Visual C++

Visual C++ is one language in the suite of .NET languages. Unlike the other .NET languages, the core syntax libraries in Visual ...