can i use vs .net to develop win32 apps?

J

Jessica Weiner

I am writing an application that I want to my users to be able to execute
without installting .net framework. For this, do I have to program using the
win32 api? I do not know VB, so my only other option would be c++ right?

Thanks.
Jessica
 
R

Richard Grimes

Jessica said:
I am writing an application that I want to my users to be able to
execute without installting .net framework. For this, do I have to
program using the win32 api? I do not know VB, so my only other
option would be c++ right?

You cannot buy unmanaged VB any more, and microsoft will soon remove all
free support for it. That basically means that VB is dead. If you want
to do unmanaged development for Win32 then you use unmanaged C++.
Petzold style Windows programming (writing windprocs) is long-winded and
prone to error. The alternatives are MFC, which is established and there
are lots of books about it, or WTL, which is much newer, but (to my
knowledge) there are no books about it. MFC is inherently single
threaded, WTL is inherently multithreaded. MFC is supplied as part of
every version of VC++, WTL is a separate download from Microsoft.

When I write Win32 apps I use WTL, but I know Win32 well, so the lack of
documentation is no bother to me. Your best option should be MFC
assuming you can get a suitable MFC Tutorial book.

Richard
 
E

Eddie

Jessica said:
I am writing an application that I want to my users to be able to execute
without installting .net framework. For this, do I have to program using the
win32 api? I do not know VB, so my only other option would be c++ right?

Thanks.
Jessica

I find the easiest way to write Win32 apps is Delphi. MFC is used more
but is hard work (IMHO).

Might also be worth looking at wxWidgets at http://www.wxwidgets.org/ if
you wish to stay with C++

Eddie
 
S

Sylvain Lafontaine

I'm not sure if this is really a good idea for you to go with unmanaged C++
and things like WFC, WTL and ATL. The order of complexity of using C++
instead of C# is at least one order of magnitude greater and doing so with
take you a lot more of time. Saying that this could be ten times greater or
more is not exagerated or unusual and even after that, you will probably
finish with a buggy and incomplete application. (BTW, I'm saying this
without being rude in any way; as I've experienced this personally myself).

Your users don't need to install the .NET framework is they already have it
and even if they must install it, this is a very small price to pay in
comparaison of the time that you will save.
 
P

Pascal Duti

Delphi is the way to go. Easy, structured, powerful, no extra libraries
needed.

Watch out to not use 'Delphi for .NET' or you stay with .NET dependency.

Pascal
 

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