Quick programming question
 

What is the predominant C/C++ development environment for Windows?

OK, now what if you want something cheaper?

Well if I wanted to tightly integrate with Visio, should I just sigh and use Visual Basic? How expensive is that?

I can't answer #1 and #3, but if you want cheap... ;)

http://bdn.borland.com/article/0,1410,21751,00.html

Most win32 C++ is done with Microsoft's Visual C++.

For cheaper, check out Borland as SteveD said or the gnu compiler in the Cygwin environment. I use bash under Cygwin as my normal shell. Very nice if you like bash over MS' stupid console. And the gnu compiler is very stable. It can be used to make true win32 gui apps if that's what you want. And all the Cygwin stuff is gnu licensed.

However, if your only need for a compiler is to integrate some code with Visio, that's a horse of another color. I imagine (but don't know - you should check) that the Visio API is OLE/COM/ATL based. If that is true, then I strongly suggest that you check into VB or C#. I've had to write COM apps a couple of times and it is a royal pain in the ass to do in C++.

From Programmer's Paradise - for the standard editions
VB is $93.99
VC# is $99.99
VC++ is $93.99

Visio is COM, it turns out. I don't know how closely I have to integrate with it, but I have a guess it's near 100%.

Visual Basic.net versus Visual C-sharp. It comes down to this. Well, I guess I'll just have to hold my nose...

Either way, it's MS
 

Anton,

It's definately not the VB you knew.

If you have any Java experience, go for VC#. It's got decent enough COM support to manage the job. It's also not a bastardization like VB.net is :).

Mitch