Visual Studio 2017 does not supportC11 new feature _Generic

Question

Can anybody advise why Visual Studio 2017 does not support the C11 new feature _Generic? I found it is a very useful feature but cannot used in Visual Studio 20

Answer 1

This is because Microsoft has never prioritized conformance to the C language standard. Over the last 20 years or so, their main focus has been C++. So Visual Studio is to be regarded as a C++ compiler.

In "C mode", it still has questionable compliance towards the first C standard C90. It took them forever to make an attempt to get C99 compliance, they made some effort towards that only in recent years. It is still not fully C99 compliant either. As far as I know, there are no plans for C11 or C17 compliance.

So if standard conformance is important to you, you must look for another C compiler.