Recent Programming Windows Stories

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In this sidebar to the Programming Windows series, a key architect of the first IBM PC defends the machine's design years later.

Early GUIs like Windows were easy to use, but they also provided advanced system-level features like cross-application data sharing.

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.

MFC allowed C++ developers to quickly generate skeleton code for even the most complex of Windows applications. After that, they were on their own.

After it finally shipped Windows NT, Microsoft spent the next five years steadily improving the product until it could replace MS-DOS and Windows.

Between 1991 and 1993, Microsoft dogfooded its own code and fought feature creep and bugs as it raced to release Windows NT.

Before there was Windows NT, there was NT, a 32-bit portable operating system that would run multiple OS personalities.

Before diving into the Microsoft Foundation Class library, I thought it might be a good idea to say hello to MFC with a bit of source code.

OOPs! By the 1990s, Windows application developers were consumed by the move to Object-Oriented Programming, or OOP.

Say hello to C++, an object-oriented superset of C that is still one of the most popular programming languages in the world.

Before moving past Visual Basic classic, let’s take a look at how Microsoft evolved VB through derivatives, one of which still exists today.

And now, a brief interlude while we ponder the personal computing coulda, shoulda been, Microsoft and IBM’s OS/2.

Visual Basic was instantly popular and its ease of use and suitability for application development helped drive Windows to new levels of market acceptance.

Visual Basic was the right tool at the right time, and it was everything that Windows API development was not: Easy, visual, and fun.

While this article series focuses on Windows, Microsoft’s empire was initially built on an even shakier foundation: The BASIC programming language.

In researching the history of Microsoft Basic, I realized I had forgotten something: We need to look at "hello, world" in Microsoft Basic too!

As a fun preview for the next several articles in this series, here’s “hello, world” in modern and classic versions of Visual Basic.

It's time to say goodbye to the Windows API, which was as hastily cobbled-together as the platform on which it originally ran.

A Windows-based take on “hello, world” neatly explains why Windows API programming was never going to take over the world.

The process of writing a Windows application with the native Windows API in the C programming language hasn’t changed a lot in the past 30+ years.

The original design of Windows was inexorably tied to that of the Intel x86 microprocessors on which it and MS-DOS ran. Yes, this is all IBM’s fault.

The book The C Programming Language from 1988 includes a simple introductory program called hello, world. It still works in Visual Studio 2019 today.

In the beginning, there was Windows. And a supporting Windows Application Programming Interface that came as part of the Windows Software Development Kit.

To fully understand why Windows was designed the way it was, we must go back in time. To before the beginning.

In 2020, Windows will celebrate its 35th anniversary. Here’s a rough timeline of each release, and how the app development model changed over time.

I’m starting a new series of articles that will examine how Windows application development has evolved over the years along with the platform itself.