VBGamer

Sorry for this, but VB does use the MFC library. Yes, it has no dependency to the DLLs, that's because they are statically linked to the VB runtime dll. That's one reason why this dll is so big. I heard that on an official Microsoft advanced developer conference (the ADC). For the use of MFC: You can love it or you can hate it. If you want to write games, you don't need it, because you only need one simple window for fullscreen games and that can easily be created by "normal" windows API calls. (Look in the DX SDK for samples) If you want to develop real windowed applications you should use it, because it is easier to do the most things with it. The only thing you can really miss are the wizards of VC++ Studio. Yes they are O.K. if you initially create your mainframe, but you will get stuck if you want to do special things. Once you have edited your C++ code "by hand" the wizards will get dizzy and you can forget them. If you want to create modern programs (except games) there are also other things you should drop an eye on: ATL (Active Template Library) and of course the VC++ implementation of COM/DCOM on COM+. So the main question is: What do you want to develop? Games? (You are here on a game programming page) => you don't need MFC. Apps? (You want to do that in C++?) => If you use massively windows and standard GUI components, learn MFC, use it and learn hating it. ;) There are good and bad arguments for every thing in this world =)