Thread: MFC programming

Well i have a question .First of all should i start with WindowsAPI or MFC ?? .I mean which one is easier to use and has more functionallity .I have a book on MFC sams visual C++ in 21 days is it goods .Please any suggestion ..

go with API, you'll be much happier.
Look into petzolds book Programming Windows Fifth Edition.

Okay alil explanation why use windowsAPI instead of MFC would help ..I just want to know why is windowsAPI better than MFC isnt it easier to creat frames and stuff like that in MFC .

i don't know about easier...but it's quicker with mfc to generate a GUI. But it's very hard to set up your programs code....everything important is buried deep inside the mfc dlls and precompiled headers....you'll learn much more with the API.

Hey thanks alot eibro that was the type of reply i was looking forward to, and i was looking for this thread..WEll thans alot at least the confusion i had is over>(WindowsAPI is the choice).

This is what i got ...Just to help some of u guys who dont really know if MFC is better or WindowsAPI

Dear Karan,
The truth is that MFC is just a light wrapper around Win32 APIs. It's
actually some C++ classes that hides the API calling details from the
programmer. I shall confess that it makes GUI programming a joy, since you
don't have to address complicated issues of Win32 APIs. So I personally
recommend using MFC on GUI applications! On the other hand, this doesn't
mean that you cannot use Win32 APIs within an MFC application both together.
You can *always* call whatever API you would like even in an MFC
application. However, there are always some overheads when using MFC, e.g.,
you should have MFC DLLs installed on your target machine.

MFC doesn't give you any suppport in security arena so that you are on your
own. You have to know COM (as well as Win32) if you are going to interact
with those Encryption/Descryption, SSL/TLS, SmartCard APIs and all of those
security benefits that the platform exposes. MFC has got nothing to do with
them!

To start, I recommend you reading Win32 vs MFC - Part I and II here at
http://www.codeproject.com/cpp/mfc_architecture.asp and
http://www.codeproject.com/cpp/mfc_architecture2.asp respectively. I've had
a rough time to explore things I've mentioned here in these articles.

Anyhow, if you have got further question, please do not hesitate to ask
them.

Sincerely,
--
Mehdi Mousavi - Software Architect [ http://mehdi.biz ]