What is MFC and what is it used for? Hail to the king, baby.

MFC is Microsoft Foundation Classes. It is used to help speed up development of applications. It can only be used for windows development and isnt worth the time of learning it. MFC Sucks!

With such a valid and detailed argument, how could anyone disagree with you?

The problem with MFC, is that it doesn''t REALLY save that much time. Especially if you reuse basic code, like for opening and maintaining windows.

A lot of the time, the gain isn''t worth it. Plus you lose the ability to port easily.

obviously the people who responded havn''t spent the time to learn MFC.

With MFC and Visual Studio i can make a fully functional word pad program in minutes.

I can make Paint in 30 minutes.

I made a diet and excercise progression program with nifty charts and stats in a couple hours.

I hooked up file converting code to a gui in 20 minutes.

ECKILLER

quote: Original post by ECKILLER


With MFC and Visual Studio i can make a fully functional word pad program in minutes.

I can make Paint in 30 minutes.

Try the same tasks with the VCL in either Delphi or BCB

You can''t simply say MFC sucks. It still have good features that can benefit an application. Anyways, there is no point to discuss it here, because I doubt anyone really want to use MFC to develop a game. I''d use SDK all the way.


My 2 cents

MFC is...

Great for Windows business-type apps.

Great for level editors.

Great for very simple puzzle- or board-variety games.

Great for putting together an easily expandable Windows apps.

Terrible for anything more complex than a puzzle-variety game, but then again, it wasn''t meant to make games in the first place. Use DirectX, or if you''re concerned about portability use OpenGL.

Delphi/VCL/VB? Would love to see you try to pull off some of the customized stuff I do for a living with that.

Kylel: Trolls suck.

Nova: Most business app development houses don''t care whether you can port it. Heck, most game development houses don''t care whether you can port it. Have you seen Motif (the Linux/Unix variety of MFC)? It''s truly awful and the dev tools cost $15k, US.

It''s an API. If you need it, learn it. If it''s useful for what you want to do, use it. If not, don''t bother. Just like any other API, SDK, language, etc.

-fel

quote: Original post by Eraserhead

Try the same tasks with the VCL in either Delphi or BCB

Now try it in Straight API in Visual C++.
Then also compare to Visual Basic to be fair to everone. Sure there are faster ways than MFC, but if you want to stick with VC++, then MFC is WAY faster than trying to do the same in straight API.



BeS
It''s Da BOMB Baby!!!
. o O ~
A little nonsense now and then,
is relished by the wisest men
~ O o .
-- Willy Wonka

MFC is an C++ class based implementation of the Win32 SDK.

MFC is used to build Windows programs faster than assembling them with the ''raw'' Win32 functions by providing reusable default implementations. If M$ didn''t provide MFC, then everyone & their brother would create their own C++ flavor of the SDK... so MFC is good to use & know for mainstream applications.

And you can use it for games! for the same reasons you''d use it for any other app. You''ll need to create a seperate thread to run your game otherwise there''s some msg pump issues. (Creating a thread is mind-bogglingly easy to do with AfxCreateThread - you don''t need a seperate class, just a static function much like _beginthreadex)

I started using MFC for my game, but I''ve decided that it''s not worth it because I think I can do a better job OOD''ing Win32 myself! (The thread unsafety really bothers me)

AFAICT, thier doc-view architecture is missing the defacto C component of MVC (model - the CDoc, view - the CView, control ???). Though it could be there biting me on the arse, or maybe you''re excepted to build that part yourself.

I like MFC & use it alot, but it needs a little tweaking. Hopefully some guys at M$ are hard at work for a revolutionary MFC v5.

And the VCL has issues too (mostly its implementation platform). I don''t think it''s any better developed than MFC. How could they leave out an OnMove event? At least they give you a crude way to supplement the WinProc.


Magmai Kai Holmlor
- The disgruntled & disillusioned