6 weeks ago, I set out to tell the history of Windows from a different perspective. Here’s a quick progress report on that work.
It’s going faster than expected, though the pace will slow over the next three weeks because of my home swap in Amsterdam and a vacation we’ll be taking in the middle of that. But so far, I’ve published 23 articles, which is roughly half of what I’ve have planned. That said, there will be a lot of additional content that’s not in the current table of contents, and I suspect this figure is closer to one-third of the final tally.
Speaking of the TOC, I published an early peek at that in last week’s Ask Paul. If you missed it, no worries: It’s a moving target and I’ve already updated it since then. So here’s the latest version which, again, will change over time as well.
Introduction
A Timeline
Pre-History
In the Beginning
Wintel
Windows API
Hello, World
Windows Application Basics
Hello, Windows
Windows API Wrap-Up
BASIC
Microsoft Basic
Hello, Microsoft Basic
Visual Basic Beginnings
Hello, Visual Basic
Visual Basic Takes Over the World
Visual Basic to the Future
NT
Microsoft OS/2
NT
The Windows NT Death March
NT Everywhere
C++ and MFC
Object-Oriented Programming
Hello, C++
Hello, MFC
Microsoft Foundation Class Library
Components
DDE, OLE, and COM
DCOM and COM+ - ActiveX, etc.
Worlds Collide
The Internet Tidal Wave
Netscape, Java, and JavaScript
Hello, Visual J++
Open Source and Linux
Antitrust
.NET
COOL and Windows DNA
Microsoft .NET and Managed Code
C# and Visual Basic .NET
Hello, C#
Hello, VB .NET
Windows Forms
Hello, Windows Forms
Windows Presentation Foundation
Hello, WPF
.NET Core
Hello, .NET Core
Modern APIs
From Metro to Modern
Hello, Windows 8
Universal Windows Platform
Hello, Windows 10
Now What?
In addition to the topics shown above that I’ve not yet written, many of which will be expanded on from what you see in the list, there are some other topics I’ll be adding back into the parts that seem complete already. These will include interviews, over time, though I will likely wait until I get back from Amsterdam to even think about that. But also more coding.
Speaking of which, there are two topics I’ve become semi-obsessed over during the course of writing this tome-like article series: Windows API programming, which is unbelievably unsophisticated in many ways and a huge curiosity to me, and the Microsoft Foundation Class (MFC) library, which could still be a lot better than it was/is. I’ve continued exploring both, and I suspect that I’ll have more articles about each in the future, and will slot them in wherever it makes the most sense. I’m particularly interested in using the original Windows SDK documentation to write a 1985 version of Hello, Windows using the versions of Microsoft C, the SDK, and Wi...
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