Challenge working with Visual Studio and VC++ ?

Question

Dear Stackoverflow Readers,

I have started working with C++ recently and am not comfortable with Visual Studio Development Environment and also I do not have proper understanding of MFC, Win32, ATL, COM Terminologies.

From example point of view, I had taken a simple C++ program to see how it works with Visual Studio Environment and I was having some issues to get that code up and running.

I would like to request if someone could point me to some online resources/books where I can get more understanding about Visual Studio Development Environment from C++ perspective and get some knowledge about MFC, Win32, ATL, COM Terminologies than it would be really very helpful to me.

Note: I have checked MSDN library and some related Microsoft sites but when I see HOW DO I kind of video tutorials they are more from .Net/C#/ASP.Net perspective but I am looking for some online resource for C++/VC++ perspective.

Thank you all Stackoverflow readers for your guidance and support. It really helps. :)

Answer 1

www.stackoverflow.com of course will have plenty of resources around if you look @ the right tags

• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/mfc
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/com

etc.

The Code Project is also a good resource for windows / C++ programming, here are a couple areas to start looking @:

• http://www.codeproject.com/KB/MFC/
• http://www.codeproject.com/KB/atl/
• http://www.codeproject.com/KB/COM/comintro.aspx (via Andy in comments)

Answer 2

The classic book about Win32 is presumably Petzold's. Petzold's book is I think (I've never read it) mostly about GUI programming; whereas the other classic/recommended Win32 book, which is Richter's, is about 'system' (non-GUI) programming.

For learning COM, perhaps Essential COM? Some reviewers praise it, but some others reviews say things like "not for beginners"; but it's how I learned COM, and I found it thorough, low-level, and detailed. It assumes you know C++ (not COM) already.

IMO you don't need books about MFC if you already know C++ and the Win32 API, in which case the reference libraries are sufficient. Alternatively, some people recommend an MFC book like Prosise's.

Answer 3

I learned using Visual Studio IDE and MFC using the Scribble Tutorial. It was a step-by-step tutorial creating a simple MFC application. Unfortunately the tutorial was written for Visual Studio 6.0, and in the meantime almost all wizards and menus changed, so it's not applicable anymore.

The tutorial can be found in MSDN, here, though: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa716528(VS.60).aspx

The scribble sample source for Visual Studio 2008 can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/f35t8fts.aspx

Answer 4

Don't bother learning ATL, WTL, MFC or COM for now (or at all, really). Just use standard C++ for starters. If you want to write GUI programs, I recommend Qt, it is much easier and fun to use than any of the former APIs.

If you have trouble compiling Qt for Visual C++ you can download the entire Qt SDK and it comes with a C++ IDE called Qt Creator. It uses MinGW as a backend.