4 ms·

> .net which is just a renamed MFC I can't agree with this. MFC was a thin C++ encapsulation of the Windows API. It was a reasonably successful technology but

> .net which is just a renamed MFC I can't agree with this. MFC was a thin C++ encapsulation of the Windows API. It was a reasonably successful technology but was unloved largely because it was so thin - it didn't try to fix the ugly mess beneath and so left developers wrestling a large smelly octopus. .Net was more of a clean room attempt to provide developers with a clean, sane, consistent API built on a new virtual machine based architecture complete with a shiny new language (C#, basically Java++).

daemin 12y ago
MFC is not a thin layer over the Win32 API, it's a thick document centric app building framework. If you want a thin layer around Win32 then try WTL.
- billforsternz 12y ago
  From wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Foundation_Class_Library http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Foundation_Class_Libr... "MFC was introduced in 1992 with Microsoft's C/C++ 7.0 compiler for use with 16-bit versions of Windows as an extremely thin object-oriented C++ wrapper for the Windows API." Thinness is probably in the eye of the beholder, but as one of the many MFC victims back in the day, I found using MFC to be endlessly frustrating because it added a layer of complexity and pain to Win32 programming without giving me anything I really wanted back in compensation - you still needed to work directly with arcane Win32 mechanisms to do simple things, like, change the background color of a window for example. Admittedly there was some (less thin) Document/View model stuff thrown in there, but the impression I got was that this was an afterthought bolted on the side. In contrast, Qt and wxWidgets for example are toolkits that are designed to make a programmer's life easier by providing a genuinely convenient abstraction of a Windowed GUI.
  - rbanffy 12y ago
    My perception on MFC is that it was neither thin, nor particularly well thought out. It felt like something Microsoft started developing for internal use and that they decided to turn it into a product for developers, with all sort of idiosyncratic oddities that make perfect sense when you are Microsoft and none to anyone else.
locusm 12y ago
I originally went from Borland C++ Builder to .Net 1.1, the move from one IDE to the other felt very familiar, going from MFC to .Net was nothing like this.
- billforsternz 12y ago
  Yes. Microsoft hired Anders Hejlsberg (Turbo Pascal and Delphi) to architect their C# / .Net development tools. So you observed a distinct family relationship there. But MFC is a different beast entirely.

daemin 12y ago

MFC is not a thin layer over the Win32 API, it's a thick document centric app building framework. If you want a thin layer around Win32 then try WTL.

billforsternz 12y ago
From wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Foundation_Class_Library http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Foundation_Class_Libr... "MFC was introduced in 1992 with Microsoft's C/C++ 7.0 compiler for use with 16-bit versions of Windows as an extremely thin object-oriented C++ wrapper for the Windows API." Thinness is probably in the eye of the beholder, but as one of the many MFC victims back in the day, I found using MFC to be endlessly frustrating because it added a layer of complexity and pain to Win32 programming without giving me anything I really wanted back in compensation - you still needed to work directly with arcane Win32 mechanisms to do simple things, like, change the background color of a window for example. Admittedly there was some (less thin) Document/View model stuff thrown in there, but the impression I got was that this was an afterthought bolted on the side. In contrast, Qt and wxWidgets for example are toolkits that are designed to make a programmer's life easier by providing a genuinely convenient abstraction of a Windowed GUI.
- rbanffy 12y ago
  My perception on MFC is that it was neither thin, nor particularly well thought out. It felt like something Microsoft started developing for internal use and that they decided to turn it into a product for developers, with all sort of idiosyncratic oddities that make perfect sense when you are Microsoft and none to anyone else.

locusm 12y ago

I originally went from Borland C++ Builder to .Net 1.1, the move from one IDE to the other felt very familiar, going from MFC to .Net was nothing like this.

billforsternz 12y ago
Yes. Microsoft hired Anders Hejlsberg (Turbo Pascal and Delphi) to architect their C# / .Net development tools. So you observed a distinct family relationship there. But MFC is a different beast entirely.