VB is great for writing client components
With VB6 it is possible albeit messy and rather challenging to create
Multithreaded Applications.

VB6 COM Support is excellent (especially with Events compared to ATL
Event dispatch sink) however if you want to create Free-threaded/TNA
components then ATL/C++ is the way to do.

There is no hard core strategy when and where to use what
But Here are few heuristics that I use

1. Use ATL COM Components when doing Server side DCOM Servers/COM+
Libraries
2. Use VB for all client access components and straight DB reads
3. Use VB Front ends and With Events Sinks for your notifications
4. Use ATL where MSMQ, Security Access, WMI, Cryptography or LDAP/Active
Directory is involved.
5. (Dump MFC as much as you can - Although I have tried a lot but I
still find it very useful)
6. Use WTL if front end size matters (e.g. Windows CE, PDAs and small
downloads)
7. Write Add-ins in VB (Office, Word, Excel, Outlook and VStudio)

However you can always mix and match. For e.g. you could always call a
lightweight COM component from VB based Office Add-in

Regards

/* Shahbaz */

-----Original Message-----
From: Distributed COM-Based Code [mailto:DCOMDISCUSS.MICROSOFT.COM] On
Behalf Of Jeff Smith
Sent: 12 January 2002 07:14
To: DCOMDISCUSS.MICROSOFT.COM
Subject: Re: OT why should i study vc++

I am a mostly VB programmer (about 75%) and I do some ATL/VC++ (about
25%),
ill take a crack at your questions.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Efan Omair" <efancomREDIFFMAIL.COM>
To: <DCOMDISCUSS.MICROSOFT.COM>
Sent: Friday, January 11, 2002 3:19 AM
Subject: OT why should i study vc++

hi all
well i am student and i have been continously been told to study vc++ by
friends ,... but non of my friends can explain to me why should i learn
it ,
could you please let me know...
1. what is vc++ ??
Think you've gotten the answers to this one already.

2. why should i learn vc++ though vb is there and
   supposed to be much easier thatn vc++

VB is good for simple tasks, of which there isn't really many. If you
need
to write a quick program that imports something into a database, VB is
great. UI is good, but definately has its shortfalls once you try
writing a
full application that looks like many of the current microsoft products.
Also VB's unicode support is ok, but not great. Once you get out of the
league of simple things, you find yourself doing so many kludges to get
things to work the way you want, C++ would have been equal or faster,
with
less kludges to begin with. For example, I was using the Microsoft
Winsock
control to transfer data in VB, everything was working, and all the
sudden
it stopped retreiving data. Now I go on the newsgroups and find that
this
happens occasionally, well, thats too often for most apps, so I have to
breakout to VC++ and write myself a COM control in ATL that does what I
need. If you ever need to subclass a window in VB, you will find that
often
you will spend more times restarting VB then actually debugging your
code,
whereas VC++ you can subclass a window (which is something you have to
do
fairly often) with no problems. In VC++ you can create Free Threaded COM
components, which are considerably faster and easier to work with (IMO,
alot
less marshalling). VB's has unicode support, but most of VB's controls
(buttons, forms, etc) are not unicode compliant, so unless your calling
the
API's directly (in which case, why use VB) you cant get unicode support.

That said, VB does have its advantages. One thing I hate in C++ is
dealing
with error handling, it seems like after every call that I have to check
and
possibly handle an error, I think my code consists of mostly error
handling
code. VB's error handling is a little easier and cleaner. VC++ has
exceptions too, but often you will have a function that you expose that
cant
throw an error, because you cant throw errors across com, so you have to
return an HRESULT, so you have to check that every time.

3. what is the plus point with vc++ which is there in
   vb and other windows based languge.

I think I went over those above, plus VC++ abilty to do services, etc.

4. what new things can i do in vc++
5. how usefull it is in .NET technology.

thanx alot if any of you could answer these question.,
Efan

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