What is difference between C++s?

Question

Hello,

I have 2 years of programming experience in Visual Basic and C# and now want to learn c++. Question is that i found two types of c++. Visual c++ and another normal c++. what's difference between them and good one for game programming.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Visual C++ is not a language. It is an IDE used to develop programs in the C++ programming language. So these aren't two things you have to decide between. You can choose a language, and it seems you've chosen C++. Now you have a choice of the development environment you want to use, Visual C++ is a fine choice. For windows, there's also Codeblocks, Netbeans and Eclipse if you want a GUI interface like Visual C++. Then there's Mingw, Cygwin and Clang if you want a command line environment.



It's actually a little more complicated than that, for example, you can integrate different compilers into Codeblocks, Netbeans and Eclipse, like GCC via Mingw, or Clang, or even the Visual C++ compiler.



@Xyon: Visual C++ is not managed code, unless you compile with the /clr switch, which makes the compiler interpret your code as a different language, called c++/cli. Which, despite the name, has little affiliation with actual ISO C++.

Answer 2

C++ and Visual C++ are essentially the same language, but visual C++ is managed code, while C++ is unmanaged. The Windows API uses C++, while the .NET framework uses managed languages which include VC++.



For a game, I'd suggest C++ is more appropriate. Visual C++ is more geared towards frontend work with technologies like WPF, while C++ is faster to process. You can download the directx SDK from Microsoft and peek at the sample code to get started.

Answer 3

c++ is the language, VC++ is a ms product kinda like a framework