Is MFC dead? Does MFC have a future?
“Is MFC dead?” is arguably the most common question appearing on the VC++ newsgroups along with variants like “Does MFC have a future?” and “Can MFC applications run on Windows 10, 11, etc.?”. A short answer would be, “No, MFC is not dead, and you can continue to develop applications using MFC and be assured that they will run on Windows 10” For a more involved answer, continue reading.
What makes a technology dead? The fact that nobody uses it any more? If so, MFC is not dead now nor will it die in the next 20 years – because, the number of people using MFC must be in the millions right now and even assuming that newer adopters would be fewer as the years go by, the amount of MFC code is so extensive that there will be a large number of developers continuing to work on it. Okay, so that definition of death wouldn’t apply here. How about considering a technology to be dead if its development is frozen? If so, same results – MFC is simply not dead! MFC has got some new additions (mostly classes that allow it to interact easily with Windows Forms) and MFC will continue to be enhanced by third-party developers. Okay, so all this talk of a dead MFC is rubbish! Next point.
Does it have a future? My answer – YES, it does. One major concern people have is that with .NET all over the place, why would someone choose MFC. Well, one big reason would be that for Win32 GUI frameworks, I (and many others far more knowledgeable and technically recognized than I am) find MFC a far better option to Windows Forms. The CFrameWnd, CView, CDialog, CWnd set of classes do not have functionally equivalent classes under Windows Forms – so the whole GUI programming approach is different with Windows Forms than it’s with MFC. At the same time, it’d be terminally stupid to ignore .NET – but then using MFC does not require you to ignore .NET. VC++ lets you mix native applications (including MFC applications) with .NET seamlessly. So, there’re going to a be a good number of applications whose UI is developed with MFC but will extensively take advantage of the .NET classes for enhanced functionality with minimal lines of code. .NET is not MFC’s nemesis, rather .NET is something that can be used to enhance your MFC programming experience. Next point.
Will MFC apps run on Windwos 10, 11, etc? They better do so else no one’s going to be using Windows 11 or whatever it’s going to be called. MFC applications are essentially Win32 applications and right now, so are your .NET applications. While, .NET apps contain a lot of IL code as their primary content, they are PE executables just like other Win32 executables. There are millions of applications developed with MFC, ATL, WTL, Visual Basic, Windows Forms, Delphi etc. that will need to run on Windows 10. So, yes, your MFC apps will run on Windows 10. Will they look ugly? Uhm, I don’t know. They definitely won’t look like Longhorn apps unless you use the MFC-Avalon framework, but then the same applies to your Windows Forms applications.
Concluding, MFC is not dead now nor is it going to die any time soon; .NET is not going to kill MFC, rather it’s going to complement it; and MFC applications will not only work on Windows 10, 11, but MFC is being updated/enhanced to support the Avalon framework. So if you are using MFC now, continue using it with confidence and pride, and next time you see this question asked in some forum, feel free to redirect the poster to this blog entry.