Visual C++ is a universal development environment that can operate equally well on any 32-bit Windows® platform. The look and feel of the development environments for the x86 and the Alpha editions of Visual C++ are almost identical. Consequently, if you have used Visual C++ on the x86 platform, there is very little to learn when using the Alpha version of the product.
By following the guidelines for writing portable code you can compile large amounts of code on any of the supported Alpha platforms without experiencing errors or performance penalties.
This chapter summarizes the differences between the x86 and Alpha editions of Visual C++ 6.0. The following topics are covered: