My college has discounted copies of Visual Studio .NET 2003 Professional for $40. I was looking at the MS website and from what I can tell, VStudio includes VC++ (as well as VB and C#, I believe). Anyway, just wondering if there was any major difference between buying this VStudio or just regular old VC++ .NET. Everything I could do with VC++ I could also do with VStudio right? I''m using Borland C++Builder 3.0 Pro right now, but I like the structure of VC++ better. I like being able to see all my classes and functions on the side and all that. So anyway, just wondering.

If you have to choose between .NET (version 7.0) and .NET 2003 (version 7.1) you should definitely get the .NET 2003 version. It is much more conformant to the C++ standard.

quote:Original post by StonieJ
My college has discounted copies of Visual Studio .NET 2003 Professional for $40. I was looking at the MS website and from what I can tell, VStudio includes VC++ (as well as VB and C#, I believe). Anyway, just wondering if there was any major difference between buying this VStudio or just regular old VC++ .NET. Everything I could do with VC++ I could also do with VStudio right? I''m using Borland C++Builder 3.0 Pro right now, but I like the structure of VC++ better. I like being able to see all my classes and functions on the side and all that. So anyway, just wondering.

For the mere $40-50 price difference you can get VS.NET Academic, which is identical to VS.NET Professional. You do get VB.NET and C#.NET, plus J# (VJ++ migrated to .NET) and ability to compile JScript.NET. Even if you think you wouldn''t use any of these other tools for a while I would seriously consider it -- its a great deal for a student, and if you later decide you want to learn C# or play with managed extension for DirectX (a bare-bones DX app in C# is insanely simple) then you''ll be all set.