Ep 46: Start Using Visual C++

Summary

This episode makes a compelling case for using Microsoft's Visual C++ compiler (MSVC) as part of your automated build chain. Jason demonstrates how MSVC can catch critical bugs related to type sizing and signedness that other compilers might miss. Using a binary search algorithm example, he shows how MSVC's warning system at level 3 identifies potential problems when working with size_t values and signed/unsigned integer conversions that neither GCC nor Clang detect with their default warning levels. The episode illustrates how these issues could lead to unexpected behavior when working with large data sets on modern systems, as vectors can contain more than 2 billion elements, exceeding the limits of 32-bit signed integers.