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I am looking to start getting into programming with simple GUI, I have been doing C++ for a while and want to step up to this. I have some friends saying learning STL will let me do what I want (simple button with counter) but others told me Win32 because it is more useful in the end.
The STL is not explicitly for programming GUI's. But it is very cool, and everyone learning c++ should spend time with it. And learning a windowing API is obviously useful.
They are two dfferent things. If you want to do a simple GUI (button, counter), the STL will not do that, the Win32 API will. You can combine the use of STL with the Windows API, but if you want the GUI stuff now, learning STL won't help you with that, it will only help you be a better programmer.
Any recommendations for guides on these 2 subjects, I have been surfing around for a good win32 one for a days now.
I presume since you have been doing C++ for a while and you're also looking at the STL (nit: it's actually the standard library, the STL was a library that was integrated into the standard) you want to become a C++ programmer.
If this is the case, avoid the win32 API. It is a C API and will not help you to be a better C++ programmer. If you want to do GUI work I'd recommend wxWidgets (oo, cross-platform but looks native), .net windows forms or at least MFC (yes I know it's a win32 wrapper)
SGI's STL documentation:
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/resources/u...STL/index.html