I just finished my first job. It was a 2 month internship where I had to do some stuff in C with the win32 api. I've always used unix-like system before so I had no idea how things should be done on Windows. All my knowledge of posix, signals, networking, process, ... was almost useless.
Ok, so the win32 api is definitely ugly. Some stuff are deprecated/replaced by newer functions but the old stuff is still kept for compatibility reasons. So you end up with a bunch of useless functions or unused parameters. The api is also pretty complex and not very consistent both in structure and in style. Fortunately the doc (MSDN) is pretty good and I managed to finish my project in time. One nice thing though, is that all parts of the system (desktop, gui, device, ...) is exposed via the same api and it's portable on a reasonable subset of Windows versions. Coming from a world where almost every of those components might be different, it's really refreshing.
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Anonymous2011-06-12 13:51
>>4
But I'm sure you enjoyed trying to do mulitplexing in Windows!
Okay, but it depends which part. I tend to like the lower-level APIs, and built-in UNICODE support, but it is a bit verbose and certain APIs are definetly overengineered. If POSIX is as small as possible, Win API is the opposite. This comes in handy when you actually need all the features, but if you don't, you can use some wrappers or simpler APIs (such as libc and POSIX layers).
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Anonymous2011-06-12 14:29
>>4
Please don't call it the Win32 API, that name is obsolete. Ever since Vista, when 64-bit went mainstream on Windows, it's been known simply as the Windows API or WinAPI for short.
And yes, there are deprecated functions and other cruft, but it does maintain binary compatibility reaching back nearly 20 years, which is a feet to be commended. On Linux, you're lucky to get binary compatibility beyond 4 years, but that's usually not a problem if you have the source code.
The biggest thing I hate about the Windows API is the overuse of hungarian notation, but fortunately, their newer COM-based APIs like DirectX 11, Direct2D, etc. have cut out as much hungarian as is possible.
Comparing code that uses Windows API versus POSIX layers, I find I have to write around the same amount of code as each to accomplish various tasks.
The biggest thing I hate about Windows development are their dynamic link libraries, and the shit you have to jump through to get SxS support working, export C++ interfaces, make sure you using the correct import libraries, etc. It's a real nightmare compared to ELF shared libraries on Linux/*BSD.
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Anonymous2011-06-12 14:31
just try to imagine how i put my dick in u mouth
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Anonymous2011-06-12 14:33
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>>7 The biggest thing I hate about the Windows API is the overuse of hungarian notation, but fortunately, their newer COM-based APIs like DirectX 11, Direct2D, etc. have cut out as much hungarian as is possible.
That's the kind of inconsistencies I was referring to: LPZhongarian, ALLCAPS, CAPS_N_UNDER, CamelCrap
Comparing code that uses Windows API versus POSIX layers, I find I have to write around the same amount of code as each to accomplish various tasks.
I have less code and it's more readable on POSIX for me. But again, I just started using the WinAPI.
The biggest thing I hate about Windows development are their dynamic link libraries, and the shit you have to jump through to get SxS support working, export C++ interfaces, make sure you using the correct import libraries, etc. It's a real nightmare compared to ELF shared libraries on Linux/*BSD.
I was working with cygwin at first but I came across what turns out to be a 10yo bug (as referrenced by the cygwin ML) and decided it was time to change development tools.
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Anonymous2011-06-12 16:23
>>11 I was working with cygwin at first but I came across what turns out to be a 10yo bug (as referrenced by the cygwin ML)
Working with cygwin is like having your mom shove her dildo up your ass. It's just not the same feeling as having a guys dick shoved up your ass.
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Anonymous2011-06-12 17:04
like taking a serrated blade in the corn hole
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Anonymous2011-06-12 17:39
Whatever OS and API you used when you popped your programming cherry is the best in the world. All other OSs and APIs are crap. You don't know how to use them, they feel awkward, and full of useless cruft. Once your mind is locked into a certain approach to programming, it is almost impossible to change.
>>14
I don't think it works like that.
I still like some of the first things I came across, but I've also found enough paradigms and programming languages which are 'superior' (there is no objective way to rate a language or some libraries/APIs, but they tend to fare differently as far as the amount of time it takes to write code, their elegance or lack of, the amount of cruft or simplicity they have and so on) to the ones I first came across.
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Anonymous2011-06-12 21:38
>>11
Yes, cygwin and mingw are utter shit, GCC really sucks on windows, they aren't using the same graph analysis libraries as on linux, so the optimizer generates very slow binaries on windows. Always use MSVC++ or Intel C++ on Windows for C/C++ development.
>>14
So that means I liked MS DOS and QBASIC programming more than C. And that I liked C more than JavaScript. And that I liked JavaScript more than Python and Ruby. And that I liked Python and Ruby more than Lisp. And that I liked Lisp more than Assembly.
Guess what? Lisp > ASM > C > ... > JavaScript > ... > Python > ... > Ruby > * > QBASIC Other learned languages omitted for the lack of practical experience.
Not only the last one came first and the first one came last, but things are pretty much distributed in a non-chronological order in the middle. Because, you know, we don't have a mind to assess what works for us.