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- From: SimsGW@msn.com (Gary Sims)
- Subject: Re: MFC v.s. OWL class libraries
- Date: 11 Jan 96 05:36:13 -0800
- References: <4cbkfq$255@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> <4chen9$ldg@gold.datalytics.com>
- Message-ID: <00001a81+00008ba2@msn.com>
- Path: news.msn.com!msn.com
- Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
- Organization: The Microsoft Network (msn.com)
-
- All that notwithstanding, MFC is the better library to deliver
- working applications. It packages the functionality you need for
- database work, communications, and other infrastructure topics while
- providing a very useful hierarchy of application classes like
- documents, views, and so forth. For example, the Microsoft Systems
- Journal this month shows a WWW server process coded using the Socket
- classes from MFC. The whole thing looked like about 200 lines.
-
- If you have a preference for keeping your own code highly pure in its
- object structure, and it bothers you to derive from the MFC knowing
- that its implementation isn't pure, then use Hewlett Packard's public
- domain implementation of the Standard Template Library. Visual C++
- 4.0 includes a copy of the STL and the book by Stepanov and Lee.
- Personally, I like the extensive support for debugging that the MFC
- provides and I don't care about it's purity. They maintain it and if
- they can improve performance (or just deliver it sooner) by
- sacrificing purity on the altar of pragmatism, that's fine with me.
-
- We transitioned from OWL to MFC about two years and haven't had cause
- to regret it. Quite aside from all other considerations, Microsoft
- has committed to regular significant upgrades of the development
- package, including MFC. So far, they've done a good job of living up
- to that commitment.
-
- Gary W. Sims
- Stonehaven Laboratory
-