Visual C++ .NET 2003 was a whole new dimension to many experienced C++ developers. When the language did not change much in its fundamentals, it did expose the language of pointers and memory manipulation to the managed world. It also provided drag-and-drop as powerful as developers of C# and VB.NET could boast of.

Hold your breat. VC++ 2005 has a whole lot more to offer. An excerpt from the MSDN Magazine article titled Write Faster Code with the Modern Language Features of Visual C++ 2005:

Visual C++ 2005 has a new syntax for development in .NET that is both elegant and powerful. It has new optimization technology that has improved the speed of Microsoft products up to 30 percent. It has new compilation modes that ensure Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) compliance and verifiability for the Microsoft® .NET Framework, and it has new models for interop that provide a seamless merging of the native and managed worlds as well as complete control over when these boundaries are crossed. The compiler includes an enhanced version of the buffer security check option present in the previous two versions, and it includes new security-focused versions of libraries in prevalent use by C++ applications. It has support for the OpenMP standard as well as for 64-bit platforms, including the Intel Itanium and AMD64 chips. It fixes the mixed DLL loading issue and provides automatic runtime elimination of the Double P/Invoke performance problem. The list of enhancements and improvements goes on and on. As one of the architects on the C++ team told me, "C++ is where it's at, man!"