With the release of Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition, Microsoft has turned its attention to the needs of a new generation of programmers. The changes that Microsoft has made respond to the growing need of programmers to quickly develop applications that are robust and able to work on multiple platforms. With the seamless integration of the .NET Framework, Visual C++ developers now enjoy the ability to create applications that can run under the Windows operating system, as the core of a server-side applet, or on many other platforms.
This chapter begins your process of becoming a C++ programmer by covering information that orients you to the C++ language, Visual C++, and the .NET Framework. When you're finished with this chapter, you'll be ready to dive right in and create your first program. By developing this application, you'll gain a sense of the steps required to build a program and some of the strengths of developing using the Visual C++ toolset.
In this chapter, you learn the following:
What Visual C++ 2005 Express is and what it can do
What .NET is and how it works with Visual C++ 2005 Express
What Visual Studio is and how Visual C++ fits into it
What the five basic steps are to building a Visual C++ application