How to start programming in Windows? [closed]

Answer 1

I'm going to go out on a limb and recommend C# using Visual Studio 2010 C# Express. It keeps you familiar with the C/C++ style your probably familiar with.

Answer 2

I'm not sure why people don't use cross-platform GUI toolkits more often. I tend to write my GUI in Java, and transfer control over to C++ for the actual program logic. If you know about the MVC architectural pattern, you can use Java to implement the view and controller, and C++ to implement the view. If the program is simple and performance isn't critical, then I often code everything directly in Java. I've listed a few pros of cons of using Java for coding UI instead to other languages below.

Pros

• Java already has a large library full of useful utilities, and is a good starting point from which one may learn other languages. There's many well-tested Swing components that are ready to use, and tutorials online that give you good starting points for many common use cases.
• Check out the JogAmp website, and try out their demos. I prefer using C/C++ to do the rendering and Java only for the user-interface, but if performance is not critical, the JogAmp APIs a lot of flexibility in terms of controlling which subset of OpenGL you would like to use.
• Java has extensive support for databases and servlets - check out the JDBC API.
• Java is open-source, and does not restrict you to using a particular IDE (or operating system!).
• Java comes with a builtin documentation generator called Javadoc, and it works really well. In fact, documentation for the JDK is generated using it.

Cons

• Java is an interpreted language, so performance will typically be worse than that of other compiled languages.
• Java forces you to frame your entire program logic using objected-oriented principles, even when they aren't a good fit for your particular use case (e.g. simple, one-off experiments). Sometimes your code can end up being much more verbose than it needs to be in order to accomplish a particular task.

Edit: There are plenty of resources for beginners, such as this one.

Answer 3

If you actually want to learn the underlying API then you should start off without one of the frameworks.

Learn it the way we did it all those years ago with Charles Petzold's book, Programming Windows. A really good foundation of knowledge of how windows and messages work will serve you well.

In the longer term, a good framework, e.g. WinForms, Qt, VCL etc. will increase productivity. But if you start with one of them, then you are in danger of not knowing the difference between sent and queued messages, not knowing the difference between an HWND, an HDC and a HANDLE, and so on.

A good framework, is great, but you'll get more out of it if you understand what's underneath it.

Answer 4

I think you can start with C#.net and then ASP.net

Answer 5

See this question:
C# GUI programming for beginners: Where to start?

Especially this answer there.

I think you should start with Windows Form, WPF is the new thing for Windows Dev and its getting all the lime light, but I would really not recommend starting off with it.

• Get Visual Studio 2010 Express
• See this MSDN page on Windows Forms

Programming Windows Forms by Charles Petzold is nice book (Charles is very cool) , windows forms hasn't changed all too much since Visual 2005, you should learn C# 4, the latest language.

Visual C# 2010 Step by Step is a good book to get a gist of the .NET world and all your options (including WPF)

See these SO questions:

• Beginners book for .NET and C#?
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4807574/best-c-programing-books-for-absolute-beginner-or-someone-just-starting-with-net
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52926/beginning-c

Hope that helps.

Update

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Incase you were thinking of going with C or C++ for windows development, is it not easy. I've done some Win32 API and believe me you'll be writing seriously long/complicated programs for even simple things

You have two MS options, you can just use the C or C++ language and call the Win32 API functions.

This book is the Bible for that.

The other MS option is using MFC, people have some rather strong (bad) views about MFC. I haven't done much of it myself so can't say too much. See : https://stackoverflow.com/questions/557114/stick-with-mfc-or-go-to-net

There are of course tons of non-MS options, which again I wouldn't recommend. See : Native Windows Application Development Options

Bottom line, in my opinion, C# is a very well done language, you will get TONs of support here, Visual Studio is one of the best tools around, and you will have fun learning C#/.NET, and the biggest advantage is you can use your C# knowledge to write even Web Apps, Cloud and Mobile apps and lots more.

Answer 6

There are various sample codes available for download. I found them very helpful when I was starting to learn to program for windows phone.

Visual Studio works great for C#. You should probably consider creating an account with microsoft whether via outlook.com if you plan on publishing what you develop.

If you want to develop for windows 8, I would advise that you install windows 8 and develop using that.