WIN32 Programming

I have owned this book for at least seven years and have made a couple of good attempts to read/study it with some success as it may not be the best first book for programming the Win32 API although it certainly treats the subject in excruciating detail and with insights garnered by the two authors who are two of the most consummately professional programmers in the world - Brent Rector and Joseph Newcomer. For example Herb Schildt's Programming Windows 98 from the Ground Up teaches WIN32 programming and I find myself more productive in less time studying that book, even though WIN32 programming teaches with a philosophy that one is (ultimately) going to be writing large multifile programs, and this philosophy isn't apparent in Schildt's book. Additionally, an added bonus of Win32 Programming are the insights one gets into writing more robust and professional code - the C code (and there is a lot of it - 140,000 lines included on the CD ROM) has been written by the very best programmers. Additionally, the treatment of each topic is probably more in depth in this book - one example being the discussion of the GDI. More advanced topics included are chapters on writing a DLL, writing an MDI application, and writing multithreading applications. Finally, at 1500 pages the book is reference-like and also like a textbook thus I would assume that it may well take the better part of a year to study each chapter and the associated applications, making it one of the finest and most comprehensive books ever written on WIN32 API programming. I paid $50 for it at UCLA and the book has stood the test of time and proves to be an invaluable work well worth the cost. Finally, this book would seemingly rank among the most professional and scientific computer science/programming titles ever written - certainly it would be one of the most massive - the index is around 200 pages long in itself!

I am an experienced software engineer with a Unix/X Window System background and needed to get up to speed on the Win32 API without being coddled like a child or taught how to program. I looked at Win32 books for several months before I found this book on the shelf.I like the organization of the book which starts with the core of a well-behaved Win32 application and moves on to bigger and better things with each chapter. I learned many good Win32 programming habits, such as the proper use of Unicode and , proper message loop structuring, and so-on from this book. These lessons in Win32 programming were learned the hard way (from the school of hard knocks also called "experience") by the authors so that I didn't have to suffer the same torturous fate.The authors start with the core of a Win32 application and then move through the core GDI objects: device contexts, fonts, windows, etc. Then they proceed to examine all the common controls one by one with an exhaustive reference of all their messages.Along the way, the authors point out places where porting from Win16 to Win32 might be a problem, as well as pointing out known bugs in the MSDN documentation and the Win32 implementation, referencing knowledge base articles for more detail. I also found the advice for those transitioning from a unix background helpful.This might not be the best book for a beginner that has never written a GUI application before, but if you're familiar with the basics of event driven GUI applications from other window systems (AmigaOS, BeOS, MacOS or X Window System), then this book will teach you what you need to know about Win32 without wasting your time explaining things that you already know and understand.If you are a complete beginner, you might be better off with a different book to start with, but still might enjoy this book as a reference once you've got the basics down. When I asked around on usenet about Win32 books, many people suggested Richter's book. I looked at Richter's book many times but it just didn't move me to buy it because I wanted a book that was a more exhaustive reference and one that didn't assume I was a beginner programmer.Several people said "Yeah, I learned from Richter, but /Win32 Programming/ is the book I keep on the shelf. Once I read through Richter, I didn't use it anymore." Another factor is that /Win32 Programming/ is hardback, which makes it stand up to lots of use on a day-to-day basis.

This is a great book to own! I continuously refer to it, and occasionally sit down with it to learn new topics. It also gives a great description of how owner-draw items work (menus, etc.) and their differences between straight-Win32 and MFC. Great coverage on bitmaps and how to use the device context for drawing, with excellent straight-forward examples!

This book is KEY. By that I mean that regardless if you choose to use MFC or not (and I do a lot of stuff that does not, being a graphics person) this book offers insight into programming, the mess that is Win32, and how to deal with it. If offers help regarding the various versions of Windows and the associated history and language conventions, the most correct and incorrect ways to deal with typing issues that some compilers would let you get around but would hamstring you later in porting your code, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, it is readable. It isnt very often you get a programming book you can take somewhere and read it, comprehend it, come back to the compiler and run the sample code later and still retain comprehension. You can do that with this book. Code is good, the explorer progs are better, but the text is first rate. I would buy this and Petzold, and your choice of MFC book, and you should be well on your way.

Anyone who currently programs in the Win32 environment or wants to learn how to do so needs this book. It exhaustively details the thousands of widgets (i.e. functions, manifest constants, structures, etc) that make up Win32, and provides detailed intellegent discussions of the concepts behind those widgets. These discussions are conducted in excellent English. The examples are mostly in 'C' with some 'C++'.As a consequence this book is not for beginners. You must have a firm grasp of 'C' in order to follow the thread of the model program which is developed in the book. Since this is some of the most difficult programming imaginable, it is not a good place to start learning 'C'.Some of the conceptual discussions are outstanding. I particularly liked the section on coordinate transformations. I had orginally consulted Windows "Help" and Petzold trying to get a handle on this elusive and difficult subject. I found that the explanation in this book was by far the most accessable and exhaustive.The index is particularly well arranged and useful, and add immeasurably to the utility of the book.This book is unique in its structure, in that it serves as both a reference and a teaching guide simultaneously. If one merely needs to refresh the memory or one encounters a new concept that need elaboration, this book will almost certainly fill the bill in the most efficient way possible.I will use this book for many years to come, and wish that I had known about it earlier as it would have saved me an enormous amount of labor. It is one of those rare computer books that is written for the ages, rather than the current release of the software. (the author of this review is a software engineer of over 30 years experience, most of it non-Windows)