Thu
30
Mar 2017

Visual Studio 2017 came out recently. The list of news looks like it has been written by some marketing rather than technial guys. It starts with "Unparalleled productivity for any dev, any app, and any platform. Use Visual Studio 2017 to develop apps for Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, web, and cloud. Code fast, debug and diagnose with ease, test often, and release with confidence. You can also extend and customize Visual Studio by building your own extensions. Use version control, be agile, and collaborate efficiently with this new release!" - I've never seen so many buzzwords in just one paragraph.

Rest of the page is not different. They even call their installer "a new setup experience". They've also introduced "Lightweight Solution load", which is disabled by default - like everyone is assumed to prefer slower option :) Some other changes: "Visual Studio starts faster, is more responsive, and uses less memory than before." - that's unexpected direction. "Performance improvement: basic_string::operator== now checks the string's size before comparing the strings' contents." - wow, that's genius! They should file a patent for that ;) I hope they do the same for std::vector and other STL containers.

OK, but jokes aside, I've installed it on my personal PC, it installed quite fast and it works good. It preserved my settings, like the list of Include and Library Directories. Upgrade of my home projects went smoothly, without any problems.

There are many changes valuable for native code developers. What's New for Visual C++ in Visual Studio 2017 page mentions over 250 bug fixes, other compiler improvements and improved support for C++11, 14, and 17. I've already heard stories of programs running much faster after recompilation with this new compiler.

Contrary to what I thought before, Microsoft didn't abandon Graphics Diagnostics embedded into MSVS after they released new standalone PIX. They've actually added some new features to it.

So I definitely recommend upgrading to Visual Studio 2017. It is IMHO the best C++ IDE, and the new version is just next step in the right direction.

It seems that there is no new version of "Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable Package" this time. Programs compiled with VS 2017 use VCRUNTIME140.DLL, just like in 2015 version.

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