VS6 was very fast, but its compiler was bad at standard compliance. GCC was much better. The newer MS compilers are way better at supportiung the standard and t

VS6 was very fast, but its compiler was bad at standard compliance. GCC was much better. The newer MS compilers are way better at supportiung the standard and they also did a great job integrating the new language features. So I would say there is significant progress since the days of VS6 :) That being said, VS 2012 works pretty fast for me (I'm on a fairly beefy machine though).