VC++ 2015 served as the foundation for the . The toolset version remained 14.x, with each Visual Studio release incrementing the minor number (14.1 for 2017, 14.2 for 2019, 14.3 for 2022). However, the _MSC_VER macro (set to 1900 for VC++ 2015) distinguishes it from later versions (1910+).
However, Microsoft did something unusual starting with Visual Studio 2017. They decided to keep the (v140) as the final, stable target for a long time. ms visual c++ 2015