windows applications

I've been taking c classes at college and after a year and a 1/2 were still ****ing around with console based applications. Does anyone have a good source to start to learn windows graphic based programming?

Charles Petzold's "Programming Windows 5th Edition". That book is the book for Windows programming. That man knows how to teach about the GUI. It's great, Windows programming! It feels as though you are really programming something useful (which seems like what you want to do).

--Garfield

Thank you... I'm going to try to get a used copy of that book off e-bay.

You won't regret it.

Hi!
I just mean:
You don´t need any GUI to program effective, interesting and very useful programs.


klausi

Windows applications are much more powerful than text based console programs. They are way easier to use and visual images make understanding and learning much more accessable for the end user your programs. Even though the recommended book is a good quality book, it is not an easy way to build windows applications. If you want a better solution than learn .NET. This is where all the creativity is being developed. It is an object oriented environment.

Yes, GUI-based programs are conquering the software market. You don't see command-based programs out anymore, do you? Even DOS is being played out of the OS picture.

--Garfield

I wouldn't mind adding, that what you use depends on your situation. Visual Studio.NET is STILLLLL in beta which it not good. If you don't have the newest operating system, WinXP, than it might be good to only read about .NET and go ahead with learning Win32 using VC++6.

I agree with Garfield, Windows applications are the best. At work they have an old mainframe using a text based program written in Cobol. What is really needed there is OOP designed Windows programs using Win32 or else MFC in addition to C or C++.

Isn't microsoft's visual c/c++ compiler based around a console
program named cl?

Hi!

Linux is becoming more popular and it is a powerful OS without any GUI, too. If you learn programming or you wanna write effective e.g. scientific programs, it´s the ideal platform. You also need to have excellent programming knowledge to program good GUI-based application. You get this knowledge on the best way by programming non-GUI-based.

You can also need command-based application to do effective automatication with scripts.

klausi

Look for books from the author, Charles Petzold. he has a good book which focuses on the C Win32 APIs versuses MFC. I am sorry I forget the book's name, I have it at home.

I thought that the console was the best environment for learning language definitions, but I don't see how becomming good at text based programming will make your windows programs any better.

I think that programming console makes learning the core language of C a little easier. But nothing more.