Programming Windows: MFC (Premium)

While Microsoft had supported Windows application development in Microsoft C and other compatible C compilers since version 3 in 1985, the firm was late to the game on two related fronts: Support for C++, the object-oriented extension to C that the rest of the industry had embraced by 1990, and a native Windows version of the product; Microsoft C was MS-DOS-based.

Microsoft temporarily addressed the first issue by releasing a one-off product called QuickC for Windows in 1991. As you may recall, the Quick series of Microsoft programming products, which also included QuickBasic and QuickPascal entries, had been released previously on MS-DOS as a counter to Borland’s enormously successful Turbo Pascal.

But the firm never adapted Microsoft C for Windows over seven major releases, though it was known to be doing so.

“Microsoft continues to work on its own C++ compiler for Windows,” Byte Magazine reported in February 1992. “Stewart Chapin, group product manager for languages at Microsoft, confirmed that the company is working on such a project.”

That product wouldn’t arrive until the following year. But before that, Microsoft C was renamed to Microsoft C/C++ and version 7.0 was released in 1992. Microsoft C/C++ 7.0 was still MS-DOS-based, but the release was notable for its support for C++ and for a new C++ class library that had been renamed to the Microsoft Foundation Class (MFC) library at the last minute. The original name had been Application Frameworx, or Application Framework Extensions, depending on whom you spoke with. AFX, either way.

(Fun aside: Many MFC functions use an “Afx” prefix due to the late library name change.)

“As part of its object-oriented software strategy, Microsoft intends to create and use a group of class libraries that it calls the AFX (Application Frameworx) Class Libraries,” Byte also reported in that same issue. “The libraries will be part of a total software environment resting on top of the operating system and GUI that will work both as part of Microsoft Windows and as an extension to Windows, the company has disclosed … The company calls its current Windows programming tools, which lie directly above DOS and Windows, the ‘Microsoft Windows Framework and Foundation.’ The AFX Class Libraries will be the next layer up: Programmers will be able to call them to simplify the work of creating Windows applications.”

I’ve never heard of the Windows API referred to as the Microsoft Windows Framework and Foundation. But whatever, the description is fair: MFC was indeed “the next layer up.” It was a class library that abstracted the terribleness of the Windows API into lightweight OOP wrappers that would hopefully prove to be more readable, maintainable, and scalable than its predecessor.

MFC didn’t really take off until the release of Visual C++ in 1993. That product shipped with MFC 2.0, a major update that doubled the size of the class library and added...