I never remember Visual Studio 6 (VC++) being slow at all at the time on 1996-era hardware - quite the opposite (other than the dreaded "updating intellisense..

I never remember Visual Studio 6 (VC++) being slow at all at the time on 1996-era hardware - quite the opposite (other than the dreaded "updating intellisense..." which would hang things for a while). I distinctly remember subsequent versions (.NET 2002, which I think had the UI re-written) being a lot slower than 6, and me still using version 6 when I could because of this. In fact, I can remember VS 6 opening in seconds, compared to later versions being much slower.