MFC vs CLI

Among the multimillion tasks we are engaged in, one is co-ordinating the UI design of AceSpy 6 with the outsourced UI designers, so of course this means coding for the new version is going on. And in C++.

Well, A burnt child dreads the fire.

So when the coders are working in MFC version of AceSpy, I need to make sure it don't meet the same fate of VB version. Because,

1. Microsoft ditched VB in favor of .NET,
2. Microsoft made Windows Phone 7 incompatible with 6.x applications,
3. Microsoft do not support C++ native development for Windows Phone 7,
4. MFC is very old platforms, many feels MS can ditch it as well.

Nevertheless, I feel developing in MFC will be lot better. My points are:

1. The alternate to mfc is c++/cli, but if you want to use cli, why not just use C#? Simpler to learn, easier to code, no pointers, no ^ to deal with.
2. One will certainly want to use C++ for it's power and performance, CLI might not bring it. As it is managed code, usage .net framework.
3. C++ is already prone to typing mistakes, how come Visual Studio 2010 missed the intellisense for CLI projects.
4.  C++/CLI also misses LINQ, WPF, etc while C# has them all.
5. MFC is in continuous development, with version 10 in distribution with VS2010.
6. VC++ 6 projects can more easily be converted to VC++/MFC 2010. Hence, a lot more code samples to learn from.
7. MFC native applications will have smaller footprint, direct contact with APIs, no marshaling, and hence more suitable for writing our kind of applications.

While, it is dangerous to foretell what Microsoft has in plan, but it might be safe to say MFC is not going down anytime soon.

 And if you are a VC++ / MFC programmer, you know we want you. (mailto:jobs@retinasoftwarein.com).