Windows programming future?

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7 comments, last by Penance 20 years, 8 months ago
What is the best thing to start learning if you want to get good at graphical user interfaces and interfaces in general? win32 is sort of obtuse and bloated. I get bad vibes when I look up stuff on MFC. So what is the future of windows programming? I know Longhorn will be based off of XML, but between now and then...what''s good to learn? Are Windows forms worthwhile? What does .NET have to offer besides language interoperability and marketing jargon?
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I use WTL it''s unsupported and undocumented, but you get the source so that doesn''t really matter.
[WTL] <- click it

[ Everwood on DVD petition ]
If your just after programming GUI''s for windows, then .NET offers a lot more than just interoperability. Windows Forms for example make GUI stuff alot easier. I have heard some bad things about .NET on large ''LARGE'' systems though I have not used it for that myself.
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50% of me is a huge nerd! How about you?
Cool, thanks for the replies.

I think what I''m really asking (after some soul-searching) is what do prospective employers look for right now? What is the most widely used system for making interfaces and applications? win32? MFC? .NET forms? And what language/API proficiencies will employers be looking for in the near future?

Thanks again =)
If you are going to learn MFC or WTL, the tutorials I have seen for both explain that you should already be familiar with the Win32 API. I cannot say what employers look/will look for though.


Qui fut tout, et qui ne fut rien
Invader''s Realm
.NET is THE frikkin'' easy to write Windows apps... and it''s not as crappy as MFC for stuff like behavior overrides and the trickier stuff. I can STILL hear one of my old roommates cursing MFC for being a pain to do subclassing...

Pretty much the only bad thing I can say about my C# (.NET) experience is the pre-load JIT time is too long for my tastes... sure, supposedly there are ways to keep the JITted copy around so it loads instantly, but I have problems getting that to work.
Don''t insult .NET around here, you''ll get flamed to hell and back.

--God has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense.- C.S. Lewis
Yeah .NET makes apps pretty easy, much better than MFC was.

However, I''d have to agree that .NET (especially c#) in its current form pretty much sucks. We''ve had to create workarounds for several MAJOR .NET bugs in our website development so far.

quick related question:

Is MS not supporting MFC anymore or something? I''ve noticed that for the past month the MFC section at MSDN has not been working at all...

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