Learn Programming

1638 readers

1 users here now

Posting Etiquette

Ask the main part of your question in the title. This should be concise but informative.
Provide everything up front. Don't make people fish for more details in the comments. Provide background information and examples.
Be present for follow up questions. Don't ask for help and run away. Stick around to answer questions and provide more details.
Ask about the problem you're trying to solve. Don't focus too much on debugging your exact solution, as you may be going down the wrong path. Include as much information as you can about what you ultimately are trying to achieve. See more on this here: https://xyproblem.info/

Icon base by Delapouite under CC BY 3.0 with modifications to add a gradient

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

Ategon

JaumeI

bugsmith

What's the current way of programming Windows? (self.learn_programming)

submitted 9 months ago by uliwitness to c/learn_programming

10 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm a seasoned programmer on Mac/Linux/iOS, and want to get into Windows application programming. Problem is, every time I try, Microsoft comes in a week later and discontinues the current framework in favor of something else. Because I need to use a C++ library, I started with C++/CX, just to be told C++/WinRT was the way to go etc.

I've lost track of what the current one is now and what has been discontinued, and can't for the life of me find recent information on the web.

Anyone here know where I can find info on what's the current one? It seems C# is still the main language, but what UI framework does one use? It used to be UWP, but now it seems WPF is back ... ?

My constraints are: I'm making Windows desktop applications, I need to be able to call into C++, and I want it to look like a modern application. I also need to create my UI from code (based on files provided by the user), not from XAML files.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] BatmanAoD 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Are you sure the frameworks you've tried are actually "discontinued"? C++/CX is still supported, it's just not recommended because WinRt is standard-compliant (CX uses compiler extensions) and has some other advantages. UWP is also still supported.

[–] uliwitness 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Win32 is also still supported on Windows, and I cobbled together half an implementation using that (but had to do way too much work to have my app not look like Windows 95), but on all other platforms, when the platform vendor makes announcements of moving away from a technology, you don't start a new project on an old platform. So I'd rather use whatever gets attention from MS, and new features, and looks right.

[–] BatmanAoD 0 points 9 months ago

Win32 is the foundational Windows OS interface on which WinRT, C++/CX, MFC, etc are all built. It's not deprecated, it's just very low-level. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_API