MFC/win32 SDK vs C# for programing windows...

[premartha]

hi i am basically a c/c++ programer. i have to start working on windows programing and need to take a decision. for windows programing i can use win32 SDK or MFC also as basically MFC are the wrapper classes over win32 APIs..fine. recently, i come to know that i can program windows using c# also, can anybody please suggest me which technology is the best to do windows programing, MFC or C#? whats really the difference between these 2 as related to windows programing? :confused:

[Danny]

C++ and MFC should be a great way fo ryou to start. I hate to say this but C# and .Net in general are still immature technologies that don't live up to the hype (you don't have to take my word for it, simply hear what Java buffs think of C# ) You can always move to this technology later, but my advice is to start with the real stuff: Win APIs, MFC, and Visual C++.

[PeterS2]

Hi. I'm from a C background on UNIX or Win32 API on Windows but had only done mainly back end server stuff (or front end work in Delphi).

I tried MFC and C#/Windows Forms out at the start of this year and wrote projects in both languages. C# was by far the easier to work with despite me having to learn C# itself. The collection of MFC calls and wrapper code is very clunky and confusing possibly due to the way it's evolved over the years. One little thing I noticed - you can't easily create a form where you can re-size it dynamically. Quite a simple thing in C#/Windows Forms. The language itself is very nice and easier to use than C++.

There are lots of other things to consider such as not being able to re-use your existing C/C++ code quite so easily with C#. You can call COM interfaces but it's not really setup for that. I think I had to generate some sort of wrapper for COM. You have to install the CLR - you can't just run a C# binary on a Windows machine without it.

Here's a more detailed reply -

http://www.dotnet247.com/247referenc...49/245077.aspx

To me, C++ is more useful as a language (I work on UNIX too) but when I do my next front end app, it will be in C#.

Peter

[ZeroFear]

you can learn C# faster, and its alot easier. w32api/MFC is hard and takes a LONGGG time to learn. But if you learn MFC/w32api, your programs will not require the .net framework to run. i also hear that c# runs alot slower then C++ but it could be just a myth.

[jonnin]

Mfc isnt *that* bad. The worst things about it are that it tries to make you use MFC stuff instead of stl stuff -- most notably strings want to be mfc strings. I did not find it too hard to learn -- its ugly, but its consistently ugly and you can guess function names / how to use it after a little exposure because of the consistency.

What apps are written in c# to benchmark it with?

[Danny]

I've heard scary stories about C#, or more specifically, .Net's performance recently. I can't recall where it was(in fact, I may have read it Microsoft's site) but the differences between a native C++ exe and a .Net app were too noticeable to be dismissed. As usual, "they're working on it" and the "next release will be much better". The problem is that the .Net and C# are undergoing serious overhauls these days, so performance isn't going to be (and can't be) the topmost priority. I guess that just as with Java, it will take C# and .Net about 10 years to mature and stabilize. Finally, the myth about C#'s simplicity doesn't hold true. As the language evolves, it will become as complex as C++ or Java. There are ex Java aficionados who claim that in its curremt shape, Java is harder to learn than C++: http://www.informit.com/discussion/i...f-41e34f13e887