[pavlov]

The “Visual” in this product’s name was one of the greatest disappointments of my childhood. [1]

I had dabbled in both QuickBASIC and Quick C on MS-DOS building very simple text games and such. When Visual Basic for Windows came out, I was ten years old. It was a revelation because it let me build something that felt like real software. Place controls on a canvas and start wiring them up with event handlers — so easy!

When Visual C++ was announced, I figured it would be the next step up. I had already learned some simple C, so probably it’s just like Visual Basic but you use an improved C for your event handlers? I harangued my dad to “borrow” a copy from his work, and sat down with the Hello World… Which was an incomprehensible 300 lines of Win32 message handlers and Hungarian notation variable names. Nothing “Visual” about it.

It did give me an appreciation for just how much work the Visual Basic team had done to hide the ugly guts of GUI programming.

- -

[1] I had a very easy childhood by most standards.

[rramadass]

Nobody who had not done Win16/32 SDK C programming ala Charles Petzold can ever understand what a paradigm shift in programming that Visual C++ with MFC was. I still remember having my boss get the Visual C++ software (around 1995/1996 ?) along with David Kruglinski's two-volume books on programming it, following the tutorial clicking through wizards and being gobsmacked at getting a full-blown ready-to-go app with much of the hard-work done for you in seconds. We rewrote our Win16/32 C app in VC++/MFC and it took us only a few months rather than years.

It was a revelation for me on the power of OOD/OOP in practice and a defining educational moment on Software Design, Frameworks and Libraries.

[pjmlp]

Those of us coming from Turbo Vision on MS-DOS, OWL on Windows 3.x, and CSet++ on OS/2, saw it as an improvement over Win32, however a worse is better, the worse of all modern C++ GUI frameworks at the time.

Lets also add MFC was born as Application Framework, and dumbed down because hardcore Win16/Win32 C folks at Microsoft were against its original design.

[rramadass]

With VC++/MFC, Microsoft wrest control of PC Programming Tools leadership from Borland. MFC was a true game changer (and later ATL too) and the VC++ IDE with wizards and integrated debugger was the icing on the cake. As i said you had to go through the pain of doing everything tediously and laboriously by hand in Win16/32 SDK to really appreciate what a paradigm shift programming with MFC was.

MFC was no dumbed down application framework but a higher level OO abstraction on top of Win16/32 SDK. It is one of the largest and most successful application frameworks in the industry. You had to learn its own concepts and architecture which were somewhat complex and had a steep learning curve but the payoff was excellent. I remember going through all the MFC Tech Notes from MSDN and poring over the "MFC Internals" book to get insight into its design and techniques. You learnt how to modulate OOD/OOP principles in service of practical implementations. Two good examples are; 1) Making all member variables of framework classes "public" (!) in order to allow the developer to drop back to Win16/32 SDK as needed and not be constrained by the application framework 2) The technique of MESSAGE_MAPS to avoid vtable memory blowup but still provide virtual function like functionality.

When i see kids on HN badmouth OOD/OOP and specifically Inheritance for code reuse via application frameworks for skeleton apps, i just shake my head and control the urge to smack them up the side of the head :-) They have been so spoiled with all the powerful application frameworks/libraries available today they simply have no idea of the design effort it took to come up with these frameworks/libraries but take everything for granted.

[pjmlp]

I stand by my comment and it is even slightly documented on Wikipedia.

> One quirk of MFC is the use of "Afx" as the prefix for many functions, macros and the standard precompiled header name "stdafx.h". During early development, what became MFC was called "Application Framework Extensions" and abbreviated "Afx". The name Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC) was adopted too late in the release cycle to change these reference

MFC was a dumbed down version of Application Framework Extensions, which was more in line with the higher level approach done by OWL and CSet++.

It might have seen brilliant for those coming from raw C and Petzold never having seen what Borland and IBM were doing, but other folks like myself have knew better.

Unfortunately Borland's mismanagement eventually gave the crown of Windows C++ frameworks to Microsoft, and IBM also wasn't much better with OS/2.

And to this day there is nothing visual in Visual C++, to the level of C++ Builder, and FireMonkey framework.

While ironically ATL, WRL and WinRT are all worse in developer tooling than what MFC had to offer.

In 2025 starting a new Visual Studio project, it is the grandpa MFC that wins out in Visual Wizards, dialogue editors and COM integration tools.

Agree that many folks around HN and similar sites lack the background of having been actually there, moving up from MS-DOS, getting to carry around Petzold's book, learning the new way of doing UIs, and why things became as they are.

[rramadass]

My point was that MFC is not a "dumbed down" version of anything. What you are pointing out is merely a name change done by marketing from what the designers called it internally. This was explained in the documentation itself and obvious in the file names and class prefixes used in the library.

Borland's OWL predated MFC (not sure by how many years) and hence held the lead before MFC came along. Once the latter become available there was no longer any compelling reason to stick with Borland and of course their management failed to counter the threat and lost it all.

I myself started with Borland's tools on MS-DOS, moved to Windows with straight Win16/32 SDK programming and then moved to VC++/MFC before moving away from Microsoft platforms to Unix/Linux in the late 90's. It was a highly educational and career-forming experience.

[CRConrad]

> Borland's OWL predated MFC... I myself started with Borland's tools on MS-DOS, moved to Windows with straight Win16/32 SDK programming and then moved to VC++/MFC before moving away from Microsoft platforms

So you totally missed / skipped Borland's VCL[1], right?

That would explain your comments: It's the only way I can see how one could come to think that "Microsoft had the lead" in Windows IDEs at... Well, ever.

___

[1]: Written in Delphi and of course used there, but also used in C++ Builder.

[pjmlp]

Unfortunately I lack the Microsoft Systems Journal in an accessible way with said articles about the real story behind how MFC came to be, so that I could reference it here.