why VC++ when VB?

[Andreas Masur]

The following is a thread which was started within the VC/VB forums. I merged these two threads and moved them over here. Unfortunately, something went wrong and the original thread was deleted before moving. Therefore I will manually add each entry here....sorry for the inconvenience.


Posted by mohanrajh

Guys,

Why do people choose VC++ with so many complications & stuffs to develop an application when there are easy(atleast compare to VC++) to program softwares like VB.
Moreover MFC written applications run only in Microsoft platforms.

I dont find any big advantage in VC++ over VB then any thing like memory management,object oriented, etc but it doesn't make a big difference when application is written very well in VB
Could any body put in detail....
may be its out of my reach to find one.
Regards,
Mohan

[Andreas Masur]

Posted by Krishnaa

You r right mohan ...
But VC++ (actually dont say VC++ , say C/C++ , as VC++ isnt a language but VB is.) is mandatory for perfomance requierment.

Lets see in details.
With VB you can have
1] Fast development.
2] Easier coding.
3] Easy code understanding.
4] Less Error handling code/understanding.

and with this ..you will get following as bonus.
5] Big size binaries.
6] No control over optimisation of resources , memory etc.
7] Less options for Portability .
8] No control over threading.(using basic VB features other than win32.)

And with VC++ you can have ..

1] Total control over code/process/memory/resources etc.
2] Development of any kind of Windows binary such as DLL's , Device drivers , plugins , Various Add-ins for Windows Programs.
3] All Windows facilites are available such as Win32 threading , memory management , memory sharing bet. processes with ease of coding.

And to achieve this you need
1] Solid Understanding of C/C++ and Window architecture with coding archi. such as MFC/ATL.


Thats all .... Now you can better decide the perfect thing for your purpose.

[Andreas Masur]

Posted by Cakkie

Well, one of the main reasons is performance, VC++ just painfully outperforms VB, making it a better choice for applications that reply on performance (like applications that control hardware or so).

Another reason is that VC++ allows you to do things that VB can't. One of the most important thing I'm thinking of here is multi- threading, somehting VB programmers would kill for.

Although VC++ often doesn't runon other platforms, it is probably easier to port a VC++ application to another platform (since it still is C++), than to port VB to another platform (which is virutally impossible, at least if you want to stick with Basic that is).

[Andreas Masur]

Posted by Boumxyz2

To add to Cakkie comments, VC++ API are also better written or better to use.

For example, If I use the winsock control in VB, I can send only the VB datatypes with it ( strings, integer, long, double, single, bytes, and bytes arrays)..

So whenever I want to send a user defined datatype, I have to use copy memory to copy it in a byte array, then I have to use copy memory Again to copy it in my variable of my defined datatype.

While in VC++, all you have to do is cast your defined type address in a char address and tell the send function to use the sizeof that datatype for the length of the data.

That's an example but I'm pretty sure there are a lot more out there.

[Andreas Masur]

Posted by M Owen

Not to mention custom timers, custom events, and customized messageboxes ... Quite a bit more can be done with VC++ ...

[Andreas Masur]

Posted by mwilliamson

Making a large project in a non-objected oriented laguange like VB or C is a headache.

Plus a lot of the Windows functions that you need for a complicated VB program have to imported for thier c libraries. I don't think anyone with argue that this is way more work than typing #include <something.h> in c++.

They say the best VB programmers are ones who have a good knowledge of C++ windows programming for this very reason.

[Andreas Masur]

Posted by Mick_2002

Originally posted by Krishnaa
And to achieve this you need
1] Solid Understanding of C/C++ and Window architecture with coding archi. such as MFC/ATL.


Thats all .... Now you can better decide the perfect thing for your purpose.

Take out the MFC for solid understanding

[Andreas Masur]

Posted by Caronte

Just one more thing to add to the said...

Not MFC and Visual C++, but C and C++ are the basis of 90% of embedded systems.

[Andreas Masur]

Posted by NightKrowler

Another reason. A lot of problems and headaches because VB OCX's and the different versions of the vbrun dll. Maybe an exe of VB will not work on a system just because of that reasons.

[Andreas Masur]

Posted by galathaea

Additionally, c++ is internationally standardized by ISO, wheras VB follows the whims of Microsoft. To see why this is an issue, just look at the quantity of changes in the new VB.NET which break much existing code.

Also, this topic is more appropriate in a discussions forum where coders from all sides of the debate may post their technical reasons for their position.

[Bengi]

the best question is: "Why VB when you have VC++?"

[Clearcode]

Much of this is moot now that .NET has come along, IMO.

[roakes]

How do the .net languages compare? I have begun looking at .net and can't see any real differences between VC++.net and VB.net.

[Kevin McFarlane]

The way to look at this is as follows:

1. The .NET languages are all [roughly] equal in that they all have the same access to the .NET Framework libraries.

2. They're not all equal in that each language has different language features. So you might be able to do some things (language-wise) in C# that you can't do in VB and vice-versa. (There are also a few .NET-specific differences between C#, VB and C++.) You will also find some significant differences in non-Microsoft .NET languages. For example, Eiffel .NET can do multiple implementation inheritance and generics in .NET 1.x. No other langauges can do this at the moment.

[roakes]

C++ is my favorate language not VC++ (STL vs: MFC) . Also I do a lot of VB 6 work.

Moving forward into .net I wonder if C++ is a dead language? On the one side Microsoft is pushing VB / C# and all the others pushing Java.