FortKnox's Journal: Visual C++/MFC People Take Two

OK, I'm a consultant. I go where the work is. The work is worse than I originally said. The requirement is VC++/MFC...

As a tech lead over 4 people.

So I can't 'fake it', or 'not do the MFC' aspect. I -really- want this job, cause I'm trying to get leadership experience to move to a project manager type of job.

So, should I just load up VC++ 6 and program until my knuckles bleed?

Yeah.

[AntiFreeze]

That seems to be the consensus.

Just keep neosporin around for your knuckles, and everything'll turn out alright.

Good luck!

I think asking a site like this...

[Xerithane]

maybe the wrong aspect. Most of us are Unix coders. I know that the devnet documentation is pretty decent.

MFC isn't so hard to learn...

[Tattva]

It is just impossible to debug and support. Do yourself a favor and spend 4 hours in design for every hour coding. Break up your project into multiple physical modules (DLL's, etc) with well-defined C (not C++ or COM if you can avoid it) interfaces. Develop your testplan and unit tests before coding the tested components. Copiously document. Always, always, always, from beginning of development to end, execute your regression suite in Release mode. Learn how to use MFC spy and (especially!) how to remotely debug so you can debug without generating windows UI events. Learn conditional breakpoints and all the features of the debugger that you can.

Mark the entire tree for interim releases in your source control, archive the entire tree for every interim release. You'll thank yourself later when you find a stack-thrashing Release-only defect and you need to know when it wormed itself in.

OK....

[The Bungi]

Let me ask you this: do you know C++ at all?

consulting

[John Harrison]

The skill that you need to have in consulting is showing up in a new place and being able to learn so quickly than you are more useful than their people in a week. You have to have a lot of confidence to be able to dare to do this, and you have to actually pull it off. The option is to specialize in some field that almost nobody knows about so you are an expert when you show up.

That said, MFC is a beast. You will be able to do some basic stuff in it in a week, but if your C++ is rusty you won't be spec

Re:consulting

[Jack William Bell]

Heh. That is kinda what I said earlier, I just cut it down to the essentials "Fake it."

I have been consulting for many, many years now. The best skill I have is knowing how to use documentation and read other people's source code. Even crappy code in a language I don't know.

(Note: I did exactly that in my last contract with full knowledge of the customer. It was a weird programming language called 'TAL' that was born of an unholy union between Assembler, C and Fortran. No-one expected me to understand it,

rumors i've heard...

[jeffy124]

... indicate that MFC is easy to learn, and similar to many other libraries out there, including those related to java. Any (decent) book on the topic should be sufficient given your past software experiences.

As for using VC++ - It's a mostly easy to use IDE. Normal C++ can be used, though I've heard that ANSI-compliant code is sometimes balked at. Here at school, I'm TA'ing the freshman programming course this semester, and they're using VC++ (though I grade them using g++).

Sounds like you can solve y

Yup

[andr0meda]

Get them bleeding quick.. no seriously I have a book called getting to know MFC in 24 days.. and that's supposed to be fast :) ... I never read it completely, but I never used MFC extensively either.. only because I had to.

Trust me, MFC is a bitch and the more you get to know it the more you will cast swearwords all over the place, especially if you're a Java minded software architect.. I know parts of it and sometimes you just have to read the headers of baseclasses to be able to hinge at what is going o

Re:Yup

[andr0meda]

..but speaking of requirements.. you can use c# instead of c++/mfc.. it pluggs..it compiles.. it's fast.. it looks better.. it has everything and more than vc++, and it works like java. I do not understand how C++/MFC can be a requirement, other than that your hiring CTO is clueless. Or maybe they have mfc custom components they want to plugg or something.. hmm I don't know how easy it would be to wrap them in c# and forget they're even there..

no brainer...

[Zarf]

you have a job. There is the distinct possiblility of you remaining employed. You may even get promoted and advance in your career by doing this. YET... you have to ask... should I? You're breaking my friggin' heart.

Someone needs a reality check.

go through the tutorials (duh...)

[joggle]

This is rather obvious, but it is how I learned MFC way back when. Try checking out the samples at MSDN [microsoft.com]. Good luck!