Visual Studio 2010 Express vs 2005 Standard

I've been using VS 2005 Standard for my work and it was recently recommended to me to try out VS 2010 Express. I have a couple of questions before I make a jump though.

1. Can I install VS2010 and keep VS 2005 Standard installed in case it's not working for me? I would (of course) install it in a different directory, but will 2010 smeg with my 2005 install?

2. How is the performance of 2010 vs 2005? Sometimes the IDE in 2005 is sluggish when viewing moderately-sized source files. Is 2010 better at handling that, or is it more resource hungry? I do have an older computer (P4 3.8 - 3GB ram).

3. Is there any way to add MFC functionality into 2010? I'm fairly new to programming, and very inexperienced with Windows-specific programming. I have an app right now that I'm almost ready to convert from console to GUI. I'd like to think that I can do it using the Win32 or MFC for performance reasons - but I'm undecided on that still. I do know that the Windows Forms applications are sluggish, so I'm guessing that .NET isn't the best for snappy software.

1) Yes, you can have both installed at the same time. They should not interfere with each other.
2) If anything, the resources of the IDE hasn't been reduced. Expect some sluggishness, but generally way better IntelliSense and lookup. It's also faster transitioning from and to debug mode.
3) Unfortunately not, unless you have Standard or above. There are other C++ GUI libraries, however, like wxWidgets. Perhaps give 'em a try.

Okay, I appreciate the info. I'll download it this evening and give it a whirl. I'll need to go to a friend's house to get it - I'm on dial-up. ;-)

And maybe I don't even need MFC, I'll look into some alternate GUI libraries like you suggested. One thing is certain though, I want my app to be snappy.

Yeah, screw dotCrap, go C++! :p
Anyhow, good luck to you. The 2010 IDE can be a bit buggy. Crashed on me several times :(

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Elysia

...Crashed on me several times...(

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The 2005 IDE crashed on me once in the month or so that I've been using it. I save fairly often, and it loads quickly so that bothers me less than how it performs. I can't stand sluggishness, I have to admit that sometimes I bust out Borland TC 3 to try out ideas. Now THAT is a snappy IDE, it just doesn't have a lot of features.

Just an update. I did install VS2010 Express... success!

The IDE is more responsive than 2005, scrolling through wide areas of code is not laggy at all now. This, more than anything, surprised me. I'm not used to software getting faster in newer releases - especially from Microsoft.

IntelliSense works like a champ now. When it doesn't, I can almost guarantee that I've typed something wrong. I have a lot of structures in my app and I often switch "." with "->", but that's getting less and less now. Maybe I need a better naming scheme for my pointers...

I've been using VS2010 Express solidly for the past two days, and I have yet to see a crash. Maybe it will happen, maybe it won't. But for now it's running wonderfully.

I took your advice Elysia and downloaded wxWidgits. I briefly looked through the documentation, and I have a lot to learn. It is a widespread library with many tutorials though, so it's just a matter of hammering through them to get the basics down.

VS2010 also supports some C++0x features. Those I know of are decltype, nullptr, lambdas, rvalue references, auto. You can read more about these on Wikipedia.
They are sure to come in handy.