But even with pristine MSDN documentation and lots of (pre-SO) googling some problems were just very hard (or I was just inexperienced).
I think tools also evolved and it's not surprising that "HTML" won, even QT looks like cutting a tree with a kitchen knife sometimes
Modern SO doesn’t help with hard problems either, such questions often closed as “too broad”.
> even QT looks like cutting a tree with a kitchen knife sometimes
C++ is just too low level for GUI. Look at WPF or UWP, both are miles ahead of HTML even with modern webdev stuff like react, but they work fast.
I think the main reason why HTML won is Apple, and modern mobiles. Building multiple rich GUI applications for Windows, iOS, Android is too expensive for many people, the platforms are too different. Even before HTML5 arrived, it was possible to build a single web app: JS workarounds for cross-browser compatibility, and different styles/layouts to support both mobile and desktop browsers.
Oh my questions were very specific usually
(the hardest one I remember was how to put a borderless window inside another window (because it could change) and making it all work. Think some good amount of win32 quirkiness was needed for that to work the way I wanted)
What is the best way in C++ to calculate the coordinate of a rectangle (hyper-rectangle) in n-dimension? I have dimensions of the rectangle in a 1d vector like {1d_min , 1d_max ,2d_min,2d_max, ...., nd_min,nd_max}. For example, in 2d the dimensions are {1d_min,1d_max ,2d_min,2d_max}. And the coordinates will be {1d_min,2d_min},{1d_min,2d_max},{1d_max,2d_min},{1d_max,2d_max}. However, I want it for n-dimension.
For people with even minimal background in geometry, it’s obvious the OP wants coordinates of all vertices of an axis aligned hyper-rectangle. A good question in my book, and it has very simple and elegant answer which I wrote there (using bits from an integer vertex index to select min or max coordinates).
I found MSDN so filled with unexplained parameters and fields, hyper-linked to other unexplained classes, that I gave up and haven’t tried again.
Where did you find the well written documentation?
Companies who developed libraries and frameworks had to do proper technical writing, otherwise people wouldn’t be able to use their technology. Microsoft did amazing job writing their MSDN, but others did well, too. Linux man pages, Java JDK docs, and similar sources contained more than enough information for a motivated reader to start using their tech, get stuff done, and be productive.
A bit later, many of the vendors created their own Q&A forums, in addition to writing documentation. Such forums are focused on a single tech, so web developers don’t come to game dev forums to close other people questions they don’t understand due to lack of background. Happens every day on modern SO.