Version history of VC++, MFC and ATL

I have tried to assemble together information about the Visual C++ releases, the compiler and the frameworks (MFC and ATL). You can find these on many places, but it is often incomplete or focused on something particular (Visual Studio, C++ compiler, framework, etc.).

The table below is the result of this effort. It is incomplete because it’s not easy to find information about products released more than two decades ago, but if you can help filling in the gaps please drop a comment with the information you have and I will update the table.

Product	Codename	Release date	C++ version	_MSC_VER	MFC version	_MFC_VER	ATL version	_ATL_VER
C 1.0				100
C 2.0				200
C 3.0				300
C 4.0				400
C 5.0				500
C 6.0		1990		600
C/C++ 7.0		1992		700	1.0	0x0100
Visual C++ 1.0	Caviar	1993	1.0	800	2.0	0x0200
Visual C++ 1.1	Barracuda	1993	1.1
Visual C++ 1.5	Dolphin	1993	1.5	850	2.5	0x0250
Visual C++ 1.51			1.5
Visual C++ 1.52			1.52
Visual C++ 1.52b			1.52b
Visual C++ 1.52c			1.52c
Visual C++ 2.0			2.0	900	3.0	0x0300
Visual C++ 2.1			2.1
Visual C++ 2.2			2.2
Visual C++ 4.0	Olympus	1995-12-11	4.0	1000	4.0	0x0400
Visual C++ 4.2			4.2	1020	4.2	0x0420
							1.0	0x0100
							1.1	0x0110
							2.0	0x0200
Visual Studio 97	Boston	1997-04-28	5.0	1100	4.21	0x0421	2.1	0x0210
Visual Studio 6.0	Aspen	1998	6.0	1200	6.0	0x0600	3.0	0x0300
Visual Studio .NET 2002	Rainier	2002	7.0	1300	7.0	0x0700	7.0	0x0700
Visual Studio .NET 2003	Everett	2003	7.1	1310	7.1	0x0710	7.1	0x0710
Visual Studio 2005	Whidbey	2005	8.0	1400	8.0	0x0800	8.0	0x0800
Visual Studio 2008	Orcas	2008	9.0	1500	9.0	0x0900	9.0	0x0900
Visual Studio 2010	Dev10	2010	10.0	1600	10.0	0x0A00	10.0	0x0A00
Visual Studio 2012	Dev11	2012-08-15	11.0	1700	11.0	0x0B00	11.0	0x0B00
Visual Studio 2013	Dev12	2013-10-17	12.0	1800	12.0	0x0C00	12.0	0x0C00
Visual Studio 2015	Dev14	2015-07-20	14.0	1900	14.0	0x0E00	14.0	0x0E00

Several notes on the history of VC++:

• Visual Studio 97 was the first product that bundled together several products (Visual C++, Visual Basic, Visual J++)
• Visual Studio 6.0 is the only version of Visual Studio that was not named after the release year, but the version number
• MFC was first release in 1992 with C/C++ 7.0
• MFC 6.0 released with Visual Studio 6 did not change the name of the MFC DLLs, that were still named mfc42.dll
• ATL was first released in between Visual C++ 4.2 and Visual Studio 97. The first release of the framework to be included in a product was ATL 2.1 released with Visual Studio 97
• Visual C++ version 3.0 was skipped to 4.0 to align the product version with the MFC version, whose next version was 4.0
• Visual Studio 2015, the compiler and framework version are 14.0 and not 13.0, a number which was skipped (for the good old superstitions)
• _MFC_VER and _ATL_VER macros were initially incorrectly documented in MSDN as 0x1000 instead of 0x0A00

References

• Rico Mariani’s history of Visual Studio
• Microsoft Visual Studio History
• Visual Studio family codenames
• The History of ATL