MFC, or not MFC...

[Mardawi]

I'm wondering if it's still important to learn MFC or (if I'm not mistaking) VC++. If Microsoft is going to make Longhorn APIs managed, then where will be the advantage of using C++ and old APIs under Windows in the future? your advice is very important to me, please tell me what do you think? :confused:

[Henry miller]

There is a lot of MFC code out there, and it isn't going anyplace. In most cases it is cheaper to have someone learn MFC to do maintance on in, than to port it over to something better. So there will always be jobs out there that require someone who knows MFC. Nobody in their right mind would start a new project with MFC. There are too many better toolkits out there. (not just .net, but also things like qt) Course a lot of better comes down to personal prefererence, I don't want to get into that argument. Still, if you are doing windows managed code is generally better, while if you want cross platform you need something else anyway. Learn what is useful to you. C++ is very common in industry, like MFC that won't change overnight. Don't blind yourself to one toolkit, when the job market changes to look for something else you need to change too. If you just want to learn something, it is sometimes best to learn something that won't be useful to your job. You can then focus on what counts not what is important now! Personally I wouldn't bother. But I've never used either MFC or visual C++. I'll learn it if I need to, but there are other things that are also worth learning.

[Navin]

Adding to what the other guy said... it appears that as time progresses, most of the MFC you'll see will be legacy apps. It certainly wouldn't hurt to learn MFC, since there is so much code out there using it. That being said, there is still a place for C++. If you ever do work on any other platform, or need to do low-level stuff like drivers, or work in embedded systems, C++ will be important. And still, the majority of client-side apps are not written in .NET yet, and it'll probably be a while before it becomes ubiquitous. So if I were you, I'd keep my options open. Go on and learn MFC, C++, but also learn how .NET works, learn Java, learn about some of the other windowing toolkits (like wxWidgets), etc. It never hurts to learn something. :) An expert is somebody who learns more and more about less and less, until he knows absolutely everything about nothing.