I think using MFC for new projects is not the most money making proposition you can take on. However, I think it's wrong to suggest win32 is obsolete. There are several tools that have built up on top of it, such as wxWidgets that are thriving. Win32 is fast and down to the metal. :-) For a small project, WTL is perfect, fast, and requires NO dependencies. If you have to build a generic corporate internal software project, sure .NET is the only thing that makes sense. But if you want to work on the big juicy projects such as MS Office or some from Adobe, or any other windows application, you better know C++ and Win32 :-).