I have tried to assemble together information about the Visual C++ releases, the compiler and the frameworks (MFC and ATL). You can find these on many places, but it is often incomplete or focused on something particular (Visual Studio, C++ compiler, framework, etc.).

The table below is the result of this effort. It is incomplete because it’s not easy to find information about products released more than two decades ago, but if you can help to fill in the gaps please drop a comment with the information you have and I will update the table.

UPDATE: Added information about Visual C++ 2017.

Product Codename Release date C++ version _MSC_VER MFC version _MFC_VER ATL version _ATL_VER C 1.0 100 C 2.0 200 C 3.0 300 C 4.0 400 C 5.0 500 C 6.0 1990 600 C/C++ 7.0 1992 700 1.0 0x0100 Visual C++ 1.0 Caviar 1993 1.0 800 2.0 0x0200 Visual C++ 1.1 Barracuda 1993 1.1 Visual C++ 1.5 Dolphin 1993 1.5 850 2.5 0x0250 Visual C++ 1.51 1.5 Visual C++ 1.52 1.52 Visual C++ 1.52b 1.52b Visual C++ 1.52c 1.52c Visual C++ 2.0 2.0 900 3.0 0x0300 Visual C++ 2.1 2.1 Visual C++ 2.2 2.2 Visual C++ 4.0 Olympus 1995-12-11 4.0 1000 4.0 0x0400 Visual C++ 4.2 4.2 1020 4.2 0x0420 1.0 0x0100 1.1 0x0110 2.0 0x0200 Visual Studio 97 Boston 1997-04-28 5.0 1100 4.21 0x0421 2.1 0x0210 Visual Studio 6.0 Aspen 1998 6.0 1200 6.0 0x0600 3.0 0x0300 Visual Studio .NET 2002 Rainier 2002 7.0 1300 7.0 0x0700 7.0 0x0700 Visual Studio .NET 2003 Everett 2003 7.1 1310 7.1 0x0710 7.1 0x0710 Visual Studio 2005 Whidbey 2005 8.0 1400 8.0 0x0800 8.0 0x0800 Visual Studio 2008 Orcas 2008 9.0 1500 9.0 0x0900 9.0 0x0900 Visual Studio 2010 Dev10 2010 10.0 1600 10.0 0x0A00 10.0 0x0A00 Visual Studio 2012 Dev11 2012-08-15 11.0 1700 11.0 0x0B00 11.0 0x0B00 Visual Studio 2013 Dev12 2013-10-17 12.0 1800 12.0 0x0C00 12.0 0x0C00 Visual Studio 2015 Dev14 2015-07-20 14.0 1900 14.0 0x0E00 14.0 0x0E00 Visual Studio 2017 Dev15 2017-03-07 14.10 1910 14.10 0x0E00 14.10 0x0E00 Visual Studio 2017 15.1 Dev15 2017-04-05 14.10 1910 14.10 0x0E00 14.10 0x0E00 Visual Studio 2017 15.2 Dev15 2017-05-10 14.10 1910 14.10 0x0E00 14.10 0x0E00 Visual Studio 2017 15.3 Dev15 2017-08-14 14.11 1911 14.11 0x0E00 14.11 0x0E00 Visual Studio 2017 15.4 Dev15 2017-10-09 14.11 1911 14.11 0x0E00 14.11 0x0E00 Visual Studio 2017 15.5 Dev15 2017-12-04 14.12 1912 14.12 0x0E00 14.12 0x0E00 Visual Studio 2017 15.6 Dev15 2018-03-05 14.13 1913 14.13 0x0E00 14.13 0x0E00 Visual Studio 2017 15.7 Dev15 2018-05-07 14.14 1914 14.14 0x0E00 14.14 0x0E00 Visual Studio 2017 15.8 Dev15 2018-08-14 14.15 1915 14.15 0x0E00 14.15 0x0E00 Visual Studio 2017 15.9 Dev15 2018-11-13 14.16 1916 14.16 0x0E00 14.16 0x0E00 Visual Studio 2019 16.0 Dev16 2019-04-02 14.20 1916 14.20 0x0E00 14.20 0x0E00 Visual Studio 2019 16.1 Dev16 2019-05-21 14.21 1916 14.21 0x0E00 14.21 0x0E00

Several notes on the history of VC++:

Visual Studio 97 was the first product that bundled together several products (Visual C++, Visual Basic, Visual J++)

Visual Studio 6.0 is the only version of Visual Studio that was not named after the release year, but the version number

MFC was first release in 1992 with C/C++ 7.0

MFC 6.0 released with Visual Studio 6 did not change the name of the MFC DLLs, that were still named mfc42.dll

ATL was first released in between Visual C++ 4.2 and Visual Studio 97. The first release of the framework to be included in a product was ATL 2.1 released with Visual Studio 97

Visual C++ version 3.0 was skipped to 4.0 to align the product version with the MFC version, whose next version was 4.0

Visual Studio 2015, the compiler and framework version are 14.0 and not 13.0, a number which was skipped (for the good old superstitions)

Visual Studio 2017, the compiler version is 14.1, a minor version of 14.0 from Visual Studio 2015, and the runtime is backwards compatible to VC++ 2015. MFC and ATL version remain 14.0 as in Visual Studio 2015.

_MFC_VER and _ATL_VER macros were initially incorrectly documented in MSDN as 0x1000 instead of 0x0A00

References

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