gcc vs. visual studio
 

I wanna hear why people use one or the other. I am gonna start coding in the next few days and I can't decide which package to install. Its either gonna be VS .net 2003, or the newest gcc compilers.

Well, VS.NET is primarily an IDE - not just a compiler.

On Windows platforms, when I'm coding C++, C#, VB.NET or J#, I use VS.NET.
On Windows platforms when I'm coding C or assembler, I use Vim and gcc.
On UNIX platforms, I use Vim and gcc.

Why not just install both? It's not like they conflict and you can only use one or the other.

I personally hate VS. I had to many problems with the stupid thing not doing things like they should have or compiling not working when it would work with gcc and it not cleaning a build and such.
Usually, I would use kate(kate was nice because it had an editor like notepad but it also had a command line, at least the version that I was using) and gcc.

The VC.net C++ compiler has come along way. It is now relatively standards compliant, and it compiles code much better than the old VC6 one.

The intel compiler is probably the fastest one you can get ahold of. I don't know how standards compliant it is, but I can't remember any code that MS compiled that intel failed to.

gcc's performance is typically not as good as intel's or MS's C++ compiler. gcc was more standards compliant than the VC6 compiler in my experience, I don't know how they compare to the VC.net compiler.

As for IDE, it is the general consensus at my office that the VC.net IDE is worse thant he VC6 IDE (they rewrote the IDE from scratch, which means the new one has... rough spots), but at the same time the compiler improvements make the transition mostly worth it. IDEs are largely a matter of taste however.

What is your previous programming experience and/or education?

What sort of things are you planning on doing?

What do you plan on doing, computer wise, in the future?

Well, I am a computer science junior, trying to do some game programming. I also have another question. Is there a way to somehow export the project configuration settings in VS.net? I have a project that has specific configuration options set, and if i plug the same code into a new project, it won't compile... I want to be able to start all new projects with these settings.

visual studio no workee on unix

If you are a comp sci junior you shold be a bit farther ahead.... oh well. A broke person (like me) would just use gcc + sdl for games :) I have VS.net, but eh, don't have windows on my machine anymore. I only have mac osx, linux and bsd, so GCC is where it's at.

VS.net is a nice IDE, just never got used to it. makefiles all the way baby ;)

VS .NET is nice for any windows compiling i have to do.

However, I still use gcc and vim for anything else (including Java)...

the main difference between the two would be that VS .NET is, like others have said, an IDE.. vim is mainly good if you know what your doing. VS .NET requires very little knowledge of the language and its API. .You can just trudge through it.

Source Insight
I work at a software house that develops ONLY windows software. However, nobody uses Visual Studio. We use the compilers, but from a cmd prompt. The popular IDEs are Source Insight and Slick Edit.

Well, I am a comp sci junior, but I have had to do 0 c/c++ programming for school. Its all java here...

Jeez, I can't believe you haven't done any C/C++. Are there classes at your uni that teach that stuff? There's no way you can be a software engineer without knowing C/C++ - the ability to work deep-down in the OS is vital for a lot of tasks.

What particular programming language you learn is not relevant at a university. Last I heard, MIT teaches their CS students the smalltalk programming language and their graduates don't seem to suffer from that choice. University is not a trade school! You go to some college for that type of training...

No course at my university taught C/C++.

There was an optional first year course that taught Pascal (and basic programming), and we covered some strange language for our 2nd year courses. After that, every course gave a selection of language we could use, in general.

Well, our concurrancy course was taught in a language the prof had invented (actually an extension of C++). And the 4th year "programming languanges" course covered a language every 1-2 weeks.

Teach someone a programming language, they'll have a job for a year. Teach someone how to program, and they'll have a job for life.

As an aside Knifemissle, the USA doesn't have the same distinction between University and College that Canada has. In Canada, College are institutions of higher learning that teach you how to do a particular job, while Universities teach both "professional" programs and teach about fields of study.

University degrees in Canada are almost all uniformly 4 years for an honours degree and 3 for a general degree*. General degrees are typically what you get if you decide you want out quick, or fail out of honours.

College degrees in Canada can be anything from 1 to 4+ years in length.

* for every rule, an exception: in Quebec, there is a strange 2 year post-highschool system and you can get a degree in 3 years after it. Highschool ends in Grade 11 in Quebec.

There are a handful of c/c++ classes here, but my operating systems teacher said that they (the staff) don't teach languages, they teach us how to program so that we can use any language...