MFC or .NET???

Ok I have been out of the Windows programming world for awhile, I never really learned MFC let alone .NET.  Also I realize this might be a flamers dream to bring this subject up.  But as I am updating my skills I am wondering if I should completely forget MFC and not learn it?  But I hear from "unreliable" sources that MFC will never die, MS will come to its senses and dump .NET because it is too expensive to convert everything over.  I notice that there are hardly any MFC books even published, so if I were to learn both (sigh) who still is writing books to learn MFC?  Makes me want to stay programming windows using Win32 templates.

 

Jhan Jensen

Dot Net!

MFC. *shudder*

They both suck. Try wxWidgets. Handles GUI, multithreading, serial communications, networking, etc. Your choice of compiler. Compile the same source code on Windows, OS X, Unix.

In C++ I pick none of the above.... Win32 programming baby!
 

Beer28 wrote:

MFC was terminated a while ago.

Not true. There is a new version of both MFC and ATL in the upcoming VC2005.

Still, I say go with .Net. .Net is the future, MFC is the past.

Manip wrote:

In C++ I pick none of the above.... Win32 programming baby!

Me too. I couldn't stand MFC, and always went with the straight Win32 way.

Sven Groot wrote:

Me too. I couldn't stand MFC, and always went with the straight Win32 way.

I'm curious, do you find yourself writing a lot of wrapper and utility classes--essentially building your own library?

Yes

Hi All,

MFC was designed with two goals

• Object Oriented Encapsulation of Win32 API
• Application Frame work for Windows Applications

.NET has an object oriented API but it lacks the existence of a flexible Application framework. It depends upon the Form framework introduced in Visual Basic.

I believe that we are still in the transition state and that MFC is a big investment that should not be thrown away. What I see from my own follow up that Microsoft is still investing in MFC and this is clear from the new link between Windows Forms and MFC introduced in VS 2005. I think that MFC will be modified to help in the transition to .NET specially with the new correct direction of using C++/CLI as a first class .NET language.

Yeah the "MFC or .NET" question did sound a little like, "Should I bang my head with a hammer, or have a slice of delicious apple pie?"

I think the answer to both questions is "what are you trying to accomplish."  LOL

Actually C is still viable if you writing device drivers or really low-level stuff.  It's not quite dead.

If you are writing applications, .NET is really the only way to go.  If you feel the need to do something crazy and C-like, you can always mix in unmanaged code or make Win32 API calls.

Good luck....

C++/CLI with Win32, MFC, .NET ...

Visual C++ Developer Center: OOPLSA Keynote: Concrete Languages on Virtual Platforms (C++/CLI) by Herb Sutter
http://msdn.microsoft.com/visualc/using/multimedia/oopsla/default.aspx

If your going form scratch - Winforms in 2.0 - awesome - if you are stuck in MFC land, well suicide is always an option.

You could go with some Linux alternatives though.  Before .net, graphics in C++ .... got a noose?

Are you stuck working for a Microsoft team, or are you starting clean?  Why on earth would you think about MFC!!!

What a silly question. .NET all the way!

I always used Win32 API instead MFC or any other framework. It was and remains difficult but the results are much better, performance and footprint wise.

Nowadays, .NET looks promising although I'm not going to write any serious stuff using Windows Forms. Not that it's a bad GUI, in fact it's exactly what MFC should be, years ago. However, the projects I'm currently involved with, still use Win32 unmanaged code and any future project will be written using Avalon, what else?

Beer28 wrote:

C isn't a language just for drivers you know.

I'm not a C programmer, but I heard it was also a great language if you hate exception handling.  Who needs all that fancy try/catch stuff when you have signals?  And if you want your code to be remotely exploitable via buffer overflows, well gosh, 9 out of 10 hackers agree, there's nothing that beats the great taste of C.

Managed code?  Garbage collection?  Bah.  Type safety?  Array bounds checking?  For wusses.  Memory leaks?  Always remember to put away your toys, kids.  Why, 4 out of 5 highly-paid security consultants recommend MORE use of C for their own job security.  (The other 20% preferred sugarless gum.)

C -- it's not just for drivers anymore!  (The K&R says so, so it must be true....)

p.s. that's an em dash, not a decrement operator.

I can be short about this:

Go C++/CLI and use windows forms.

Developers!        Developers!        Developers!
Managed code!   Managed code!   Managed code!

Sheva

Beer28 wrote:

C isn't a language just for drivers you know.

Isn't Windows Vista itself written largely in C and (unmanaged) C++?  After all, it's built on the Windows 2003 server code base.  Anyway...

Has anyone here tried to use WinFX with C++/CLI?  That would be my preferred approach, if it's even possible.  I'd like to download the SDKs and find out, but I would need a stand-alone dedicate computer that I could crash a lot, before I would risk it.