When I started coding for Win16, my first option was Turbo Pascal with OWL, eventually I started to use Turbo C++ with OWL.
With the switch to Win32, the tools became VB, Delphi, Smalltalk and Visual C++ with MFC.
Like every Windows developer I also own the Petzold book, bought for Window 3.0 development, and other good one from Sybex, probalby the one book that ever explained how to properly use STRICT and Message Crackers introduced with WIndows 3.1 SDK.
However I might have written about five applications in pure Win32 API instead of using one of the former language/frameworks, as requirement for university projects.
In general, I think many developers only have the bare bones native experience without making use of proper RAD tooling, or the UNIX way, which has always been pretty bad in tooling for native GUIs versus Mac and Windows or even OS/2.
Re:It’s time to kill the web app
by mwcampbell on Monday September 25, 2017 @10:38PM
(#15335736)
Qt also isn't very good for accessibility. https://blind.guru/qta11y.html
I find it fun to write Cocoa apps too, and I do on occasion for throwaway stuff that only I am going to use. But too many people (including me, at home!) simply don't use Macs. When I have to write a portable app, the choices basically come down to GTK+ (doesn't look native anywhere but GNOME on Linux), Qt (requires C++ plus moc and doesn't always look native either, for example on GNOME), or writing everything from scratch for every platform. While the last choice may be the "right" one from a purist's point of view, the extreme amount of work necessary to make duplicate Windows/Mac/Linux (often plus Android and iOS) versions makes it all but out of reach for anyone but big companies.