Professional IDE / Compiler

[mewatC]

Hello,

so far i have only written console programs with Visual C++ 6.0(free version),
but now i will lern to program with WinAPI, and i want to give away
my programs (for free or shareware).
Wich IDE should i buy, Visual Studio 2005 or an IDE from Borland?

Thank you!

greetings,
newatC

[Ken Fitlike]

Moved to Tech.

Before taking the decision you may want to give Borland Builder a trial first, if you haven't already done so; you can also try out msvc-express for free which will give you some idea of what to expect from msvc2005.

[Mario F.]

If you want to program with the WinAPI I'd suggest you don't buy anything. You can download for free Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition. Borland's excellent Suite, although much more feature ridden than the Microsoft 's alternative, is not free. So, it dies in comparison.

However, if it is really the WinAPI you are interested in. It doesn't matter what you choose. You can download editors like Code::Blocks and Dev-C++ that support compilers like MinGW and Digital Mars. Their libraries are more than adequate to access the windows API.

However, if when you say WinAPI you also mean a wrapper like Microsoft's MFC or Borland's VCL that enable you to code within a RAD environment (you drag a combo box to the WYSIWYG editor and set its properties, for instance), then... Microsoft is no longer doing that for native C++. It's trying to push its new toy onto the world, .Net. So you can only do that for Managed C++. In that case, Borland's suite is the way to go. It supports RAD development of native C++ windows applications. I'm not sure if you can use the MFC with it. But VCL, I hear, is not a beast one would want to stay away from.