What is Reddit's opinion of Programming Windows®, Fifth Edition (Microsoft Programming Series)?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Hopefully someone has something a bit more current, but Petzold's Programming Windows is (was?) the win32 bible. There are newish reviews on Amazon so it looks like it still floats a few boats.

Those aren't advanced C topics, though. They're advanced programming topics or advanced operating systems topics. That's what I'm trying to explain. What you want are books that are teaching certain advanced concepts, where they just happen to be using C or C++.

An actual book on Advanced C++ would cover things like crazy use of templates to implement currying of functors or stuff like that. Not what you want.

This book is "old" but still amazingly relevant and well-written:

https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Windows®-Fifth-Developer-Reference/dp/157231995X/

This old book from 1998 teaches GDI I believe:

http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Windows%C2%AE-Fifth-Developer-Reference/dp/157231995X

Seeing as GDI went entirely out of style not long after, I'm not too surprised that GDI tutorials are hard to find - GDI+ even harder. But that's about as official as it gets, and used copies are $5 on Amazon.

Well, one option is Charles Petzold's book. It's a bit date now, as it came out in 1998, but a lot of the core API is the same (file operations, threads, dealing with Window messages etc.).

EDIT: I just remembered that I bought another book that's not quite as old: Windows System Programming, 4th Edition.

I thought they were both pretty good really. Thought the last one (obviously) has some newer stuff than Petzold's book.

https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Windows%C2%AE-Fifth-Developer-Reference/dp/157231995X

The Petzold bible for all things win32 and C.

https://www.amazon.com/OpenGL-Programming-Guide-Official-Learning/dp/0201604582

Some version of the red book for OpenGL

Take a look at WinLamb source if you want to see how to build a native GUI.

As for books, Charles Petzold's Programming Windows is the classic reference.

You should be using GetStdHandle() or another function to get the required handle to the console. See here

If you need to read up on Windows API programming read this

Your post came across, to me, as a tiny bit combative, but it's pretty likely I was just reading that into it. Text can be like that.

Anyway, it's hard to say what is "generally used" to create Windows applications. If I had to guess, I would say Skype is probably a C++ application. And as for image editors, well, I don't know. Photoshop? Probably (at least mostly) C++. Paint.NET? The name implies it's all .NET, which could be C++/CLI or C# or some combination of .NET technologies. Those are all just guesses, as I said.

If I were you, and if I were super committed to learning the ins and outs of Windows programming, I might pick up a Petzold book (There is probably a more current reference, it's just that Charles Petzold really knows his way around the Windows API) and start learning some C++. It's just that you'll be building Windows from scratch that way and you might get bogged down in language and API details that you wouldn't have to deal with if you were exposing yourself to Windows programming first through C#. If I were a different version of you (than hypothesized previously in this comment, I mean), I might try out C# and make a couple little Windows apps and then try to determine what it is that I want to do that I can't seem to do in C#, and learn how to do that. Maybe that means that you need to switch to C++ and the naked Windows API, but maybe that means using C# in a different way, I don't know. You do have to start somewhere, though.

So I just realized that none of the above addresses the "framework" part of your original question. There are some options for this, but all of them will require some legwork on your part. By that I mean, if you don't know C++, and you don't know how the Windows API works underneath the abstraction of a framework, you're probably gonna have a bad time.

The question "how do I create a Windows app" has a ton of answers. If you can come up with a more concrete plan for what it is that you want to do (it will also help to know where you're starting from. How much programming experience do you have, and in what languages?), maybe we can help you flesh out a roadmap for getting from wherever you are to wherever you want to be.

>>Why choke people with details of inconsequence?

Permit me an analogy.

Here is a book on the Windows API. Please go write Starcraft III from scratch.

Here is a book on Homotopy Type Theory. Please use it to replicate and expand on the results of Goedel and rederive a proof of Fermat's last theorem.

Here is a book on Kant. Please revisit and critique post-modern philosophy and the inherent issues it inhereits by rejecting all systemic philosophy.

It shouldn't be a problem, right? All the information here is transparent. You should not at all be confused. Ever. Because all the information is in front of you.

On the other hand, here is a book on elementary mathematical reasoning.. Use it to figure out how many combinations there are of 3 committee members from a pool of 11 (very close to a situation in the book).

Clearly that's a terrible way to go about advancing knowledge or understanding of a subject. There is an orderly transition from beginner to experienced to contributor.

Now, one may talk as to when the appropriate time to introduce the confounding issues into the pedagogy is appropriate -- that is the whole crux of milk before meat.

The Church shouldn't care a flip about the small details of, say, Zina, because it's entirely inconsequential to the message it's taking to the world. Prophets are men like the rest of us, with a bit of a greater burden on their shoulders to teach the word of God -- meaning they have to go to God to get it. Their "credibility" is not at stake -- the invitation is, remains, and always will be to take it to God and see what he has to say about things.