C# and the .NET Framework: The C++ Perspective

Windows Forms, Web Controls, and GDI+

If you were developing programs for Windows clients or servers at any time in the last 10 years, it's very likely that you were using Microsoft Foundation Classes. MFC is a great system for producing consistent and fairly complex user interfaces that are easy to create using wizards. The disadvantage of MFC comes from the fact that management of operational items such as collections, graphics, file management, serialization, and so on was built into the MFC framework classes themselves. Probably about 85% of what you deal with in MFC involves an object-oriented class “wrapper” on some low-level construct. .NET breaks that mold. The system namespace—with all the operational bits and pieces like native data ...