Win32 API

“make everyone do the insane BOOL ret = Win32Function(); if(!ret) { DWORD err=GetLastError(); } dance”

“Win32 is a surprisingly handy cross-platform GUI toolkit with surprisingly relaxed licensing restrictions”

“Win32 has been hardly maintained and it's riddled with compatibility problems”

“The Win32 UI system has been neglected for many years and is missing very basic functionality by modern standards”

“While Win32 tends to deliver the most resource-efficient and responsive apps if the complexity is not high”

“Win32 API is great and responsive; ATL/WTL (and MFC) are still very useful abstractions with little cost.”

“Win32 is still there, it still works and it still produces scroll bars that work like they did before”

“I’m still really impressed by most of win32 given it was designed at a time where the software and hardware landscape looked so different”

“The GUI parts are a sometimes hacky mess because behavioral changes created mismatches between what functions were specified to do”

“Win32 is absolutely the best GUI system, you get the most clean, performant and easy-to-use results.”

“the classic ones work, including with accessibility, and are highly functional and batle-tested”

“The point is not that Win32 is exemplary. The point is that it's compatible.”

“that single binary will run unmodified on essentially every Windows machine from XP onward”

“all new OS features require a new runtime and are not accessible from just pure Win32 any more”

“there is nothing difficult about making a Win32 program that idles at 0% CPU when not in use”

“Win32 UI works, is fast, works everywhere even on ancient 640x480 server screens”

“the limits to how it handles memory made things confusing when you loaded large amounts of data into the GUI”

“Microsoft resisted UTF-8 forever, and so using the ANSI/multibyte strings didn't therefore give you modern functionality”

“The Win32 USER and common controls just don't not support dark mode, but are actively hostile to it”

“they're extraordinarily stable and you'll probably need to reach for them anyway”

“On Win32, Microsoft can just add another C function to user32.dll and you don't have to think about protocol”

“plain Win32 API is a perfectly viable option if you are using C++ (or another "OO" language”

“After bouncing around GUI toolkits (from win32 to SwiftUI) and web for 30 years I have simply run out of fucks.”

“I find it a breeze to write native gui programs in pure win32 and c++.”

“Yes, win32 lasts forever and outlived every attempt to replace it.”

“your native application will be met with a system prompt trying to scare user away”

“kernel32+user32+gdi32+d3d[11|12]+dxgi is a pretty great API abstraction for game development”

“Desktop programs performed better 20 years ago when everything was written in Win32, Qt, GTK and others”

“I have some experience already with win32, and all the programs I have fond memories of are written with it”

“You want to learn something that leads to a long-term career development path, not a sunsetting technology.”

“The only part of windows that really matters in the long run is win32 which has been extremely stable.”

“If you use something like Win32 it probably will remain usable into the far future”

“I had to create my own Win32 wrapper so everything works properly in .NET 4 frameworks”

“my Windows API knowledge (essentially: just Win32) is still exactly as useful as it was then”

“Only if I don't need to do anything beyond the built-in widgets and effects of Win32”

“The only platform you list I would build for is MS' Win32, which they can't afford to deprecate”

“It was insane, and I did little more than type in code from a "big book of Win32 programming”

“win32 api turned out to be most stable way to make apps running on linux”

“Win32 doesn't even support dark mode properly because it's effectively "deprecated" like all the others in the graveyard.”

“the classic Win32 API is actually quite decent, especially the small subset needed for games”