Re: C++ questions?
MFC is good if you want to limit your knowledge to windows programs.
But be carefull with MFC!!! They seem to be easy to use but are hard to master!!!
If you want to write more general programs you could use the STL (Standard Template Library) as mentionned above. It might be a littlebit harder to start with them (especially the iterator part might be strange at first) but they are very powerfull once you know how to use them!
Or if you realy want complete flexibility you could try to write your own container class and overload the operators you want ([], +, +=, ==, ...)
(You should read a good C++ book before you start doing this ;-) )
The suggestion I give about Visual C++:
Try learning C++ first!!!
Visual C++ is dangerous and allot of ppl loose themselves in writing gui's and putting the algorithms, data, ... in the gui's (BAD!!!). They never seem to get to thinking about classes, inheritance, overloading, ... .
Try starting with the functionality (in a terminal application for example) and DON't start with putting the buttons on the dialog box and calling the classwizard to add a method to the button.
Antharax