I don't even get this arduousness argument. A barebones WinMain is extremely long-winded (what causes most people to "nope out"), certainly, but once you get passed that it's fairly consistent and the API calls reasonably formed. I don't think it's an example of a perfect API, but the concepts and functionality of it mean once you learn the basics of it (handles, resources, parentage, text encoding, type annotation, etc) they apply to any other widget you'll implement, from legacy ones all the way back in 1993 to modern ones introduced in Windows 7+.