Should I learn MFC?

[WiKiDJeFF]

Recently I started fiddlin around with MFC Applications and looked at some examples. For some reason it looked much harder and more complicated to do things in MFC then with plain old win32 API. Am I not understandin what I'm seeing or am I right?

[CornedBee]

API winApi("Microsoft Windows API");
ClassLibrary mfc("Microsoft Foundation Classes");
Programmer you("WiKiDJeFF");
bool useMfc = false;
if(you.getKnowledgeLevel(winApi) >= GOOD) {
  useMfc = mfc.try();
}
useMfc = useMfc && !you.needPortability();

MFC has some quite strange and hard to understand philosophies, like the doc/view model. I like it, others dislike it. It's certainly not a good example of object-oriented design, but it does it's job very well.

[made_of_asp]

I think a Visual C++ programmer should learn MFC. It is used very commonly in applications.

[CornedBee]

Originally posted by made_of_asp
I think a Visual C++ programmer should learn MFC. It is used very commonly in applications.

I don't think so. Visual C++ is about the best compiler in terms of generic optimizations and because of this alone very popular in Win32 programming. MFC is a question of personal preference. Sure, Netscape 4, ICQ, EditPlus are all using MFC, but many applications aren't, including (interestingly enough) Visual Studio.NET (VC++6 did) and the MS Office suite.

Some people, like parksie, just don't like the structuring of MFC. That happens, and only because they might own VC++ they don't need to use MFC.

But I would agree to
"A Visual C++ programmer should take a look at MFC once he knows the API."

[made_of_asp]

Maybe you are right, but a lot VC++ jobs i've seen require MFC knowledge. Still, the more you know, the better. Personally I dont like MFC