MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes)
Ranked 29 of 45 GUI frameworks by recommenders
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.
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.
36 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 11
- criticize it
- 25
- approval share
- 31%
Recommended in 9 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 11 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 0.4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 9 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Still supported and updated
“Win32, MFC, Windows Forms, and WPF also exist and are quite usable.”
Comment from 11 Jan 2026 in “Microsoft May Have Created the Slowest Windows in 25 Years with Windows 11” “MFC (yes it is in a better state than WinUI 3.0 with C++)”
Comment from 22 Mar 2026 in “Windows native app development is a mess” “MFC, WinForms, WPF are all still supported and updated.”
Comment from 22 Mar 2026 in “Windows native app development is a mess” Good tooling
“the aging MFC has much better tooling”
Comment from 29 Jan 2026 in “Winapp, the Windows App Development CLI – Windows Developer Blog” “heck even MFC has better tooling”
Comment from 24 Jan 2026 in “Banned C++ Features in Chromium” Low resource use
“ATL/WTL (and MFC) are still very useful abstractions with little cost.”
Comment from 26 Oct 2026 in “Oldest GUI application that still runs on Windows 11” “very resource friendly compared to using Electron today”
Comment from 13 Dec 2025 in “Are we stuck with the same Desktop UX forever? [video]” Thin practical layer over Win32
“There were decent and reasonably thin layers over that to solve the immediate practical issues”
Comment from 22 Mar 2026 in “Windows native app development is a mess” “ATL/WTL (and MFC) are still very useful abstractions with little cost.”
Comment from 26 Oct 2026 in “Oldest GUI application that still runs on Windows 11”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Old, unintuitive APIs and macros
“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.”
Comment from 7 Jan 2026 in “Stop Designing Languages. Write Libraries Instead (2016)” “MFC that was low-level enough that all the things that were tedious about Win32 remained tedious”
Comment from 6 Apr 2026 in “Microsoft Hasn't Had a Coherent GUI Strategy Since Petzold” “how unintuitive say MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes- big in the win9x days) apis were”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “No more O'Reilly subscriptions for me” Weaker than rival frameworks
“it has been a wasteland of frameworks, since MFC there have been multiple attempts”
Comment from 12 Dec 2025 in “COM Like a Bomb: Rust Outlook Add-in” “MFC always felt so lame compared with Borland offerings”
Comment from 25 Apr 2026 in “Turbo Vision 2.0 – a modern port” “Not only has MFC never been at the same level as OWL”
Comment from 12 Aug 2026 in “Delphi 13 Community Edition Is Now Available” Dated, 1990s-looking visuals
“Win32/MFC inherently are stuck around Vista visuals, with no dark mode support.”
Comment from 22 Mar 2026 in “Windows native app development is a mess” “Do UIs built with MFC still look like they were built in the 1990s?”
Comment from 29 Dec 2025 in “Developing a Beautiful and Performant Block Editor in Qt C++ and QML”
Other GUI frameworks people recommend
The four most recommended other GUI frameworks, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qt | 191 | 133 | 59% | 12 | 15 yrs7 owners | — |
| GTK | 85 | 118 | 42% | 12 | — | — |
| Windows Forms | 76 | 33 | 70% | 12 | 15 yrs3 owners | Approved |
| SwiftUI | 75 | 121 | 38% | 11 | 4 yrs8 owners | — |
| MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes)This page | 11 | 25 | 31% | 9 | — | — |
What people said
38 of the 46 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“ATL/WTL (and MFC) are still very useful abstractions with little cost.”
“Why is MFC somehow not really better.”
“MFC isn't available on macOS or GTK.”
“Just look at Unicode. It’s an unholy mess.”
“how many do they have now all still "supported"?”
“Not only has MFC never been at the same level as OWL”
“MFC was the first real attempt at simplifying UI code, but you still had to write code”
“It just "ticked" in a way that for example MFC didn't.”
“much easier than say C++ and MFC”
“the same mistake Microsoft made with MFC/WTL/VB6”
“which does everything required, although it doesn't always get hidpi on legacy apps correct”
“MFC always felt so lame compared with Borland offerings”
“MFC sucked because it was C++”
“MFC that was low-level enough that all the things that were tedious about Win32 remained tedious”
“MFC is the ugliest thing you'll see.”
“it just didn't make any sense”
“There were decent and reasonably thin layers over that to solve the immediate practical issues”
“MFC, WinForms, WPF are all still supported and updated.”
“Win32/MFC inherently are stuck around Vista visuals, with no dark mode support.”
“MFC, wx, Qt .. it's all overcomplex pointless bloat for this task imo.”
“MFC (yes it is in a better state than WinUI 3.0 with C++)”
“native GUI APIs are complete shit. Both for the programmer, but also for the user.”
“Using it from MFC, kind of alright.”
“I can understand if you're using an ancient framework like MFC”
“Of course you can still build on MFC or Win32, but meh.”
“the aging MFC has much better tooling”
“heck even MFC has better tooling”
“Win32, MFC, Windows Forms, and WPF also exist and are quite usable.”
“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.”
“I liked it despite the ugly macros”
“they all suck compared with React/Vue”
“Do UIs built with MFC still look like they were built in the 1990s?”
“Microsoft, for all its C++ use, has never produced anything better than MFC to this day”
“very resource friendly compared to using Electron today”
“it has been a wasteland of frameworks, since MFC there have been multiple attempts”
“how unintuitive say MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes- big in the win9x days) apis were”
“At a certain point with the MFC they had it dialled in, while pioneering asynchronous browser tech, with many best in class tools”
“Then they wrote 2010 with MFC and it was slow and lost tons of features.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.