History of programming frameworks

In the beginning of time (for programmers), all of the software had to be custom written by the same team. Right from the interface, to the background logic, to tests, and the code to handle user input. Everything was custom coded. There were no common grounds on which two different teams could build their projects.

As it is evident, this is a pretty inefficient way to write code, and building large projects is terribly-terribly hard. As the complexity of computer software grew, computer scientists realized things could not be allowed to remain the way they were.

The programming languages that were subsequently developed were higher level, and had ready made libraries, which held functions that a programmer could call to perform routine tasks like printing data on the monitor, drawing a line, basic math, etc. A programmer could construct libraries of his own, and connect them to several projects, or even sell them to other programmers.

In higher level languages like C++ this was a much encouraged trend. Hundreds of ready-made source code units cropped up that let you do everything from handling input devices, to drawing complex interfaces, and calculating complex mathematical functions. They were called libraries, and sometimes when they became more complex, frameworks.

After Windows became the most popular operating system. Microsoft released a set of ready-made libraries they called the MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes), which made windows based software development easier in C++ by giving the programmer quick access to many interface elements, and required functions. The MFC was the most popular framework for years.