Is Microsoft moving away from VC++?

  • Article

Finally I am back in office from TechMela. My plans to do live blogging about TechMela did not materialize – it was more hectic than I thought and whatever time I got on Day 2 and Day 3, after delivering my presentations on Day 1 – I spent in talking to people and attending sessions. The next few blog posts would be about the TechMela itself – I will try to share my learning and try to fill in the gaps by addressing questions that people generally asked.

Before I start, I want to applaud every person who was involved in the making the TechMela such a success. This has been a learning experience for me, especially about how tough it is to organize such a HUGE event. Imagine a team of around 15 people pulling off an event of this scale! And pulling it off SPECTACULARLY well! Hats off to them!

Now getting down to something more important – I have been getting questions about whether MS is moving away from C++? Even before I explain let me answer the question – "NO". The question is same as does MS like VB or C# more – "NO".

Here are my two cents and thoughts to this, I had written a post on a similar question some two years back https://techthots.blogspot.com/2005/05/what-is-best-programming-language.html, but to be concise - Language is just a means to express something that you want. You can do it in any language you want. Some languages make it easier to express something and others make it easier to express the others. In the end – it is a matter of what you want to do and which language are you comfortable doing it in.

One of the reasons people might have had this question is that most of the demos we displayed were done either using C# or VB. Now that definitely does not mean that VC++ is dead. There are a couple of things that may have contributed to this choice – in such huge events, the aim is to target majority of the crowd; the aim is to demonstrate the technology – not the language (unless the technology is directly related to the language); the aim is to make the demo as simple as possible so that the people can understand the core concept. It is impractical to assume that attending a session will make you an expert on that technology. The idea is that you should get enough meat to get you excited about the technology and insufficient data to compel you to research and look for more.

Another reason why a wrong signal might have gone through is that all the cool new things that we have in C#/VB for Orcas such as LINQ, lambda expressions, expression trees etc are missing for VC++. I do accept that this is something that needs to be addressed on top priority and I am sure the C++ team is working on addressing these.

Having said that – now let me address the C++ part in Visual Studio 2008 "Orcas". There are a few new enhancements in VC++ for Orcas as well. More information can be found at:

There is a nice video on "Visual C++ today and tomorrow"

Another program that confirms long term plans for the VC++ compiler is Phoenix:

I hope I am able to address the immediate concerns regarding VC++ - if you have specific questions or queries – please do let me know though this blog and I can try and get answers for the same.