# MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes)

11 Hacker News commenters recommended MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes) and 25 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 9 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Still supported and updated, with good tooling and low resource use for Windows C++ apps. Critics find its APIs dated, macro-heavy and stuck with old-looking visuals.

## Why people recommend it

- Still supported and updated (3 comments): "Win32, MFC, Windows Forms, and WPF also exist and are quite usable." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46574895)) "MFC (yes it is in a better state than WinUI 3.0 with C++)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47480056)) "MFC, WinForms, WPF are all still supported and updated." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47483025))
- Good tooling (2 comments): "the aging MFC has much better tooling" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46809270)) "heck even MFC has better tooling" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46741793))
- Low resource use (2 comments): "ATL/WTL (and MFC) are still very useful abstractions with little cost." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50250581)) "very resource friendly compared to using Electron today" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46258739))
- Thin practical layer over Win32 (2 comments): "There were decent and reasonably thin layers over that to solve the immediate practical issues" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47483493)) "ATL/WTL (and MFC) are still very useful abstractions with little cost." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50250581))

## What people warn about

- Old, unintuitive APIs and macros (3 comments): "Just look at how beautiful and elegant and easy to learn and transparent to debug the Microsoft C++ MFC COM/OLE/IDispatch/ActiveX object system macrology is." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46528938)) "MFC that was low-level enough that all the things that were tedious about Win32 remained tedious" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47658668)) "how unintuitive say MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes- big in the win9x days) apis were" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46198311))
- Weaker than rival frameworks (3 comments): "it has been a wasteland of frameworks, since MFC there have been multiple attempts" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46242132)) "MFC always felt so lame compared with Borland offerings" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47899221)) "Not only has MFC never been at the same level as OWL" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49277491))
- Dated, 1990s-looking visuals (2 comments): "Win32/MFC inherently are stuck around Vista visuals, with no dark mode support." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47482799)) "Do UIs built with MFC still look like they were built in the 1990s?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46421320))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Qt](https://hackerapproved.com/p/qt.md): 191 recommend
- [GTK](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gtk.md): 85 recommend
- [Windows Forms](https://hackerapproved.com/p/winforms.md): 76 recommend
- [SwiftUI](https://hackerapproved.com/p/swiftui.md): 75 recommend
- [Tcl/Tk](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tcl-tk.md): 61 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes)", https://hackerapproved.com/p/mfc/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).