Path: chuka.playstation.co.uk!news From: Mark Green Newsgroups: scee.yaroze.freetalk.english Subject: Re: Visual Studio/C++ Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1999 12:06:24 +0100 Organization: PlayStation Net Yaroze (SCEE) Lines: 34 Message-ID: <37E8B830.2602CE30@reading.ac.uk> References: <37e7cfcd.18742521@www.netyaroze-europe.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: ssfmse3.rdg.ac.uk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (WinNT; I) X-Accept-Language: en Nick Ferguson wrote: > Hi all, > I've been learning C++ in my spare time recently, and I am looking for > a freebie version of Microsoft Visual C++ such as might have graced > the cover of a magazine of similar. I could probably get the full > version of Visual C++ 6 for about 70 quid as a student, but an upgrade > from 4 or 5 might be cheaper... I'd also like it for fooling with the > MathEngine SDK, which I got proper documentation for and looks quite > simple to use. Yay! I plan on looking into Visual Basic and J++ too, > so I might be better off getting the Visual Studio package. Hmm... any > ideas on how to do this cheaply and legally? The student package is a pretty good deal, but Microsoft are real pains about sending it out. (Normally, you buy a box off the shelf, fill in a form to say you're a student, and send it to Microsoft, who send you the software. Now that seems a fine way to do it if you want to sell the box on the shelf, but when I actually called Microsoft to ask if I could buy it directly, they said that I would actually have to MAIL ORDER THE EMPTY BOX only to immediately send it back with the form filled out! Why couldn't they just fax the form? (And the fact that he still needed the form to show I was a student when the Microsoft rep had phoned me twice in my lab passing through the University switchboard each time..) I went ahead with this, and they then sent me the wrong box (Office instead of VC++), took 3 months to notice that it had been returned, and then told me that they would refund the purchase and I could start again instead of just sending me the right box..) On the other hand, I would be careful about it and you might like to go for a different system, really. If you like game development, DJGPP/Allegro is far friendly than VC++, especially if you've used the Yaroze. (The complete DJGPP can do C++ too.) I have found VC++ to be an incredibly frustrating system to attempt to learn. (And be sure you have lots of harddisk space. VC++ will require you to install at least 3 CDROM's worth of data - and IE4 (WHY is this necessary for a development tool?) - to make it usable. VS is probably even worse.)