I'm a die-hard Borland VCL lover myself. C++ Builder with VCL is the power of C++ with the ease of Visual Basic. With it, you can program anywhere from assembly or straight Win32 C to MFC and ActiveX stuff. Of course, the VCL beats them all, IMO.
I used C++ Builder years ago and I loved it too.
These days though its all MFC for work reasons. And once you get used to it, its not too bad either.
In either case, I can't say I've ever been the victim of any serious type safety problems anyway. And in the professional world, you'd be hard pressed to CYA if you ran into problems using freeware instead of MFC.