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I've heard the same thing about the Afx macros and the plan for another more ambitious framework.

In my opinion the biggest obstacles for MFC were: * a pretty bad C++ compiler (the first good MS C++ compiler was the one with Visual Studio 2003 as much as i remember) * that the core group were "old school" C guys that either couldn't design a better object oriented system or thought that it would be to hard for the "normal" developers

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Just decided to do a bit of archaeology.

The macros in the Windows 3.1 SDK were the strict header mode and message crackers.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/83456

It made my life sane every time I had to use C instead of C++, and yet very few people knew about them.

Petzold never mentioned them in his books, I discovered them by chance in another book.

Nice to know that the Afx story might have not been a rumour, since other people heard the same.

My first Visual C++ was v5.0, by then it was already clear that Borland was on they way out as first choice. Sadly.

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