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Programming Windows with MFC, Second Edition Review by Matthew T. Deluca
Comprehensive and understandable - really learn MFC
I purchased this book a number of years ago when I started a new job which required me to program using MFC. I had never done any programming for Win32, let alone using MFC (which wraps around the Win32 API). Coming from this state of ignorance, it only took a short time of working with Prosise's book for me to gain enough confidence to start writing MFC programs on my own.
The book covers most of the major areas that an MFC programmer would have interest. Topics such as dialog based applications, the potentially confusing document / view architecture, property sheets, mouse and keyboard IO, menu management, creation of custom controls, bitmaps, UI and worker threads - all are explained with exceptional clarity thoroughness. After reading a given section I felt a true understanding of the material - the information is taken to a depth which seems to be uncommon in many windows programming books.
At its core though, this is a windows programming book and through its many examples it succeeds in providing an excellent foundation. One may question the usefulness of some of the examples but keep in mind that they were not written for practical usefulness but instead they were intended to solidify the concepts presented in the chapter - which they usually do quite successfully.
More recently, others at my company have found it necessary to program for Win32 and my first piece of advice for them is to sit down and read through the first chapter of Prosise for a day or so. After that, answers to most questions can be found within the remaining 1200 (!) pages of the book.
Note that the CD which came with the book worked fine on Windows NT and Windows XP. Also, the book targets Visual Studio 6.0 but most of the topics are still valid in Visual Studio .NET.
So why review a book that is almost seven years old at the time of this writing? I felt like I owed Prosise for creating such a comprehensive and understandable work and writing a positive review seemed a nice way to say "Thank You".