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Creating a Windows C++ program in visual studio 2015

I need to write a C++ program that will run on MS Windows. So it will need a graphical user interface and it will not be web based.

So will this be an MFC application, since it needs a GUI? Or is there an alternate way of creating a project that does not rely upon an MFC based application?
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sarabande
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phoffric

I should add that if you are not restricted to Microsoft Visual Studio, then you could use QT creator on the Windows platform to write, compile, and run your program  all within qt-creator. Originally when I took the Linux program over to Windows, I built and ran the program in QT creator. But since the IT department did not add the Microsoft debugger kit, I was not able to debug in QT creator. Since I prefer Microsoft Visual Studio debugger over the qt-creator debugger environment, they are going to add QT to the Microsoft Visual Studio program.

Note that the Microsoft  debugger kit needed for Qt Creator debugging is not necessary to install for Microsoft Visual Studio debugging.
MFC ... and it wraps the core GUI widgets into rather thick wrap. It will force you accept kind of all-or-nothing from the MFC framework.

actually, for the recommended dialog-based mfc application nothing of the above is true. you would get working code for a starter app within minutes. and mfc classes provide very lean wrappers of pure C WINAPI functions, where most interfaces keep close to the original C WINAPI functions with the only difference that the windows handle wasn't passed as it was a member of the CWnd base class. so you can mix pure c code with mfc and have all c++ possibilities to derive from mfc classes. same you can use stl library and higher and use the newest c++ compilers without problems. if you would go to SDI or MDI framework of mfc, things are going much more complex (for example visual studio is an MDI application) but still i would strongly controvert that you have take all or nothing.

Sara