What is the difference between C++ and Visual C++?
Newcomers to the newsgroup often ask this without realising that Visual C++ isn’t a language at all. Visual C++ is the Microsoft C++ implementation for Windows, one vendor’s C++ distribution with extensions that are intended to aid programming in the MS Windows environment. If the word “implementation” is confusing, just think “compiler”. The words are sometimes used interchangeably, although strictly speaking a compiler is only one part of an implementation. One of the tasks new C and C++ programmers have to accomplish is learning the difference between the standard languages and their various implementations. This task is often made more difficult due to bugs or incompatibilities in the implementation, as well as the many extensions and additional facilities that vendors make available. On alt.comp.lang.learn.c-c++, we try to point out the differences wherever we can.
