Wikipedia.org site suggests that Windows Forms attempt to replace Microsoft MFC; I also noticed that more books out on Windows Forms and less books on MFC.

But "Ivor Horton's Beginning Visual C++ 2005" includes both a chapter on MFC and Windows Forms. And Horton's recommended path to build Visual C++ programming career is:
 Beginning VC++ Programming ---> Beginning MFC Programming--->Beginning MFC COM programming--->Professional MFC with VC++.
(Mr. Horton has this path chart prescribed on the back of his two previous books: "Beginning VC++ 5" & "Beginning VC++ 6".)

My questions are:
1) If Windows Forms has a clear advantage over MFC, is it necessary or taking trouble learning MFC for a VC++ beginner?
2) If Windows Forms still is in primitive/transitional stage, is it possible that MFC going to be phased out anyway, say in 2, or 3 years?

MFC is an easy to use wrapper for Windows APIs. You learn MFC to do Windows Programming, programming for native windows environment, which involves Win 32 DLLs, COM development, application development etc.

Windows Forms, however is an abstraction of the things that you need to do to make a Windows application with various forms. I call it an abstraction 'cause the whole thing is designed to be portable, and thus has better affinity with .NET concepts. If Microsoft succeeds in developing Frameworks for other platforms, your application might as well run on platforms other than Windows without or with minimal changes in your application.


Actually if you are going with .NET and gonna stay with it, you don’t need to learn either VC++ or MFC.

If, however, you are getting into core windows development you can hardly do anything substantial without learning VC++.

The two, as I mentioned earlier have different business areas.


Now the question is not if Windows Forms will replace MFC, ‘cause the two have different business areas, but whether all windows programming will shift on .NET or not.
While it may seem like a possibility, I have my reservations about it, ‘cause .NET as I mentioned is designed to be portable, and even when more and more windows functionalities are being added to framework with its each new version, I believe core windows development would still be happening in VC++ and MFC will always be an integral part of it. So MFC is here to stay for at least those many years.


I would like to get comments on it if anybody sees longhorn bringing any drastic change in this equation.

Regards
Ankur Verma