64 bit programming and compilation- visual studio 2008 or visual studio 2010?

For 64 bit progra开发者_StackOverflowmming and compilation - Which is better and advantageous visual studio 2008 or visual studio 2010?

I would use VS2010 SP1. They added new optimizations, support for new CPU extensions to the C++ compiler there, and 64-bit Intellitrace.

Release notes for SP1 are here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/983509

In my experience there were several serious bugs that manifested in the 64-bit version of the Visual Studio 2008 debugger. It would get confused between objects and pointers to objects (requiring an extra * when you tried to put the object in the Watch Window). Calling user-defined functions on complex objects from the Immediate Window would mysteriously fail or hang. I reported these bugs to the Microsoft VC++ compiler team, and they fixed them in Visual Studio 2010, where I have had no 64-bit debugger problems. Therefore I can offer you some solid evidence to prefer VS2010 to VS2008.