Rating: 
Summary: Concise, easy, and useable...
Review: I bought both of the MFC and Windows 98 Programming from the Ground Up books at the same. They are nearly indentical in content. This fact is great for a begginning Window's programmer (like me), but not so great for those on a budget. The Windows 98 book has more subjects, but is written using the 'traditional' Windows programming methods. The MFC book (of course) uses MFC and therefore is the much easier way to program for Windows. I never use the examples in the book 'as is'. The author writes his code examples and descriptions of the code well enough, that I can use the examples as guides to use in my projects. While neither book should be considered a complete reference, both provide enough information that I am constantly flipping through them to look for examples (which the MS Visual Studio does not show very well.) I bought SAMS' Teach Yourself Visual C++ 6 in 24 Hours before these two books, which mainly teaches how to use the compiler. I previously had over five years experience in DOS programming with the Borland C++ compilers. In a about four months and these three books I feel that I know everything that I need to know to write any 'common' Windows 9x application using MS Visual C++ 6.
Rating: 
Summary: Applicable to MFC v2 not MFC v6.
Review: I bought this book to learn MFC version 6 which the book claims to cover. The examples do not use any of Visual c++ wizards and I was constantly battling to try to get Visual c++ to accept the example code. Additionally it is only when you get to chapter 17 that the author reveals that all the examples in the book have been written for MFC version 2 and chapter 17 gives a brief overview of version 6 and the class wizards. I gave up on the book at chapter 5 and have made good progress using only the help and examples found on the Internet. I think your money would be better spent on a more current book.
Rating:
Summary: This is the best beginner MFC book I have read!!!
Review: I can't believe it! I can actually understand Windows programs that use MFC! I can't begin to explain the countless wasted hours I have spent reading other books only to become more confused as the days went on. Although it is a general introduction and will not make you a pro, it gives the reader a solid understanding of how to create basic Windows programs and utilize many controls. Now I can understand other more advanced MFC books with relatively no pain.I hope that Schildt will write some books on ATL COM (or just COM in general) in the future since this is a technology that is becomming very popular and lacks understandable teaching materials. HINT! HINT! A number of authors have already made a mess of this subject and once again we need Schildt to bail us out.
Rating:
Summary: A Bridge from the API to the MFC.
Review: I concur with many of the other reviews in that I was disappointed by other authors' "MFC" books which taught only how to use wizards. This is the book I was seeking for all along, a bridge between the API and the MFC... maybe now I will read one of those wizard books.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Intro to MFC out there.
Review: I have a few books on MFC and windows programming in general, with one thing in common - they were collecting dust on my shelf, because none of them covered the fundamentals good, they would all go right into wizards, or spend forever on semantics, without really teaching you why. I'm an embedded engineer, with good c background, and some experience with c++, and this book IS THE BEST. After spending less than 1 hour on first few chapters, I felt like I was finally getting it, and right now, more advanced reading like Blaszczak's MFC finally makes sense. I am also surprised by negative reviews here - in my opinion this book is THE book to get started with windows programming, and really know what you are doing.
Rating: 
Summary: Get Prosise's book instead
Review: I have a number of Schildt's books, and like his very clear style. But Prosise's book on MFC is probably a better choice for most people. My major complaint is that Schildt's code does things in less-than-the-best way. He has a skill in presenting examples focused on a point, but sometimes simplifies too much. Example: Most MFC programmers create a modeless dialog box "on the heap" (using "new"). Schildt's example makes it a global variable, thereby avoiding some important issues. It would have been better either to address these issues, or omit the topic and refer people to the documentation. There are many instances of this sort of thing. I think the book could be excellent if you just want to get your bearings in MFC, enough so you could do your *real* learning from the MSDN documentation. In principle, I like learning from source documentation, but Visual C++ is so rich that the extra guidance offered by Prosise got me up to speed much faster. After reading Schildt, you will have to plan on spending quite a lot of time with the MSDN documentation.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but...
Review: I pretty much agree with most of the comments below. This book is straightforward, and a good introduction to MFC. It's not a Prosise book, but it does cover the fundamentals, which are all a beginner needs anyway. The book does contain numerous errata, however. (For example, the word "hierarchy" is misspelled in the captions on both pages 18 and 19. And that's just the beginning.) Overall, however, these don't detract significantly from the book's content. I would recommend this book to anybody who doesn't know a thing about MFC and would like to learn the basics. Just don't try to contact the author, though, who seems like a real jerk. I e-mailed him twice asking him if he would like a list of errata--even through an e-mail address that I got from the publisher--and he flat out never responded. Other authors seem grateful for such feedback, but not this guy. Anyway, even though the author seems to be someone you would never want to meet, this book is still a pretty good buy.
Rating:
Summary: Very Very Basic
Review: I recommend this book if you know nothing about windows programming and are just looking for an introduction. One of the problems with most MFC books is that they seem to be too quick on the basic concepts and just focus on details. This one is entirely dedicated to basic concepts and leaves details for others. This book won't make you an MFC programmer by any means but it will get you started. One complaint...was it really necessary to repeat the same code over and over again and only make minor changes to it. It seems it would be about 150 pages shorter if they hadn't done that. Also considering how basic most of the book is, I found the chapter on ActiveX Controls to be incomprehensible for a beginner, this chapter is very badly written.
Rating:
Summary: A great book for beginners and beginning windows programming
Review: I think the "from the ground up" books are excellent". I have about 20+ years experience in various languages (fortran, C, C++, Pascal etc). Most of my experience is in straight line programming and was having trouble getting my brain around the MFC concepts. I spent a couple of days with the Windows 98 from the ground up to get the nuts and bolts view of windows programming and another couple of days with MFC Programming from the ground up. The nice thing is that the author follows the same subject matter in the same order with the same examples in all of the books. This was very helpful to me. It allowed me compare both styles and by starting with the API versions was able to see what is happening under the hood, which you won't find out if you start with MFC ( but it's close with this book). Other reviews have complained about it being tedious as it kept using the same code with only small changes. This is the only way to teach. Any teacher worth his salt will tell you this. You don't need to type in the code as it is provided and you can cut and paste the major code and make your own changes to see various options work. Each piece of code builds on the previous which allows you to see exactly what is happening (you wouldn't see this if each example was completely different from the others). As I said I was able to do a couple of hundred pages in a few hours (it will obviously take longer if you have little experience) and it was definitely worth my while. The complaint that this book didn't have "difficult to find stuff", is a bogus complaint. Of course it doesn't ( and I guarantee there is NO book that will give you the answer to every possible question), this is not an MFC Bible - it is a learn how to program MFC from the very beginning. It does this very well and covers all the pertinent material necessary to write a very complete program. Any programmer who has any experience at all will tell you will need many books on the same subject as REFERENCES. But without this type of book as a starting point - reference books would be of little value as you won't easily know where to find the information you need or how to use it, if you do find it. One last observation on these reviews. When one reviewer says "Schildt's code does things in less-than-the-best way", he is obviously not a very knowledgable programmer or only know one way to do things. There is no such thing as a "best way". Sometimes a persons best way, is not a very instructive way. He claims it is too simplistic. That is the whole point of the book. If not "too" simplistic, many people will have a harder time. I guarantee you no book will make you an expert, only experience does this. It never says it will make you an expert - but that you will learn to program windows using the MFC. This it does very well. I'm sure some will disagree with me, but obviously Schildt did it right. Just look at all the people that this book helped. There is no way to please everyone, but I think this book comes as close as any is going to.
Rating:
Summary: A great book for beginners and beginning windows programming
Review: I think the "from the ground up" books are excellent". I have about 20+ years experience in various languages (fortran, C, C++, Pascal etc). Most of my experience is in straight line programming and was having trouble getting my brain around the MFC concepts. I spent a couple of days with the Windows 98 from the ground up to get the nuts and bolts view of windows programming and another couple of days with MFC Programming from the ground up. The nice thing is that the author follows the same subject matter in the same order with the same examples in all of the books. This was very helpful to me. It allowed me compare both styles and by starting with the API versions was able to see what is happening under the hood, which you won't find out if you start with MFC ( but it's close with this book). Other reviews have complained about it being tedious as it kept using the same code with only small changes. This is the only way to teach. Any teacher worth his salt will tell you this. You don't need to type in the code as it is provided and you can cut and paste the major code and make your own changes to see various options work. Each piece of code builds on the previous which allows you to see exactly what is happening (you wouldn't see this if each example was completely different from the others). As I said I was able to do a couple of hundred pages in a few hours (it will obviously take longer if you have little experience) and it was definitely worth my while. The complaint that this book didn't have "difficult to find stuff", is a bogus complaint. Of course it doesn't ( and I guarantee there is NO book that will give you the answer to every possible question), this is not an MFC Bible - it is a learn how to program MFC from the very beginning. It does this very well and covers all the pertinent material necessary to write a very complete program. Any programmer who has any experience at all will tell you will need many books on the same subject as REFERENCES. But without this type of book as a starting point - reference books would be of little value as you won't easily know where to find the information you need or how to use it, if you do find it. One last observation on these reviews. When one reviewer says "Schildt's code does things in less-than-the-best way", he is obviously not a very knowledgable programmer or only know one way to do things. There is no such thing as a "best way". Sometimes a persons best way, is not a very instructive way. He claims it is too simplistic. That is the whole point of the book. If not "too" simplistic, many people will have a harder time. I guarantee you no book will make you an expert, only experience does this. It never says it will make you an expert - but that you will learn to program windows using the MFC. This it does very well. I'm sure some will disagree with me, but obviously Schildt did it right. Just look at all the people that this book helped. There is no way to please everyone, but I think this book comes as close as any is going to.
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