C++ and MFC
TL;DR
C++:
“In 1989 C++ 2.0 was released followed by the updated second
edition of The C++ Programming Language in 1991.[9] New features in 2.0 included multiple inheritance,
abstract classes, static member functions, const member functions, and protected members. In 1990, The Annotated C++
Reference Manual was published. This work became the basis for the
future standard. Late feature additions included templates, exceptions, namespaces, new casts, and a boolean type.
In 2011, C++11 was released which added more features and enlarged the
standard library further (compared to it in 1998), providing more facilities
for C++ programmers to use, with more additions planned for 2014 and 2017.”
I remember taking a class on C++ using Bjarne Stroustrup’s book in 1992
or 1993. Since C++ was so new to industry, my professor didn't even really understand the
class implementation of the language making the class quite nightmarish. This
was also the last programming class I took in college. After graduating
college, I didn't do any programming until coming to Corning in 1999, and that
was just VBA.
MFC:
'Windows Forms seemed to me what MFC should have been'
All the early books used C, but then Petzold shifted to
writing about C# and .NET. Was he comfortable with such a high level of
abstraction?
“I started out with machine code and assembly language. I
took to C very well. I kind of skipped over C++ and MFC. C++ always looked like
an extraordinarily ugly language to me, and MFC was not a very well-designed
object-oriented wrapper around the API. I thought there should be something
better. My first experience of .NET was with C# and Windows Forms, and was
extremely favourable. [sic] I liked C# sharp as a programming language, I liked
.NET as a sturdy, extensive, runtime library, and Windows Forms seemed to me
what MFC should have been.”
This is interesting since LabVIEW (sorry, yes, everything
right now relates back to LV, I should diversify) seems to rely so heavily on,
but is quite hamstrung by it.
