pew@cs.brown.edu (Peter E. Wagner) (06/12/91)
I have a few questions regarding MS-Windows. I have used MS-Windows
just a little bit, and have never programmed anything for this
platform. My gut feeling is that it must be a real bear to write
MS-Windows applications.
- Is this true?
- What about the fact that it runs on top of MS-DOS - isn't this
inherently limiting?
- Is memory access beyond 640K slow?
- Do you crave OS/2?
I also have another question which is, er, kind of embarassing. RTFM
is an acceptable response. I erased the solitaire executable from the
windows directory. I now want to reinstall the game. I copied the
executable back from the floppy, but it doesn't run. I get a nasty
error message which tells me I should shut down Windows. What do I
have to do to get this thing working again?
Thanks!
Peter
--
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Peter E. Wagner (401)863-7685 pew@cs.brown.edu
Department Computer Science Box 1910 pew@BROWNCS.BITNET
Brown University, Providence, RI 02912 uunet!brunix!pew
----------------------------------------------------------------itkin@mrspoc.Transact.COM (Steven List) (06/14/91)
pew@cs.brown.edu (Peter E. Wagner) writes: >I have a few questions regarding MS-Windows. I have used MS-Windows >just a little bit, and have never programmed anything for this >platform. My gut feeling is that it must be a real bear to write >MS-Windows applications. > > - Is this true? If you're talking about using C or C++, yes it's true. Using one of the packages like ToolBook or Actor or Smalltalk is much easier. Or you can wait a little while for Borland and others to come out with things like the Object Windows Library for C++, which should make life much easier. There are lots of packages out there now that make it a lot easier in both 3GL, 4GL, and OOP environments. >I also have another question which is, er, kind of embarassing. RTFM >is an acceptable response. I erased the solitaire executable from the >windows directory. I now want to reinstall the game. I copied the >executable back from the floppy, but it doesn't run. I get a nasty >error message which tells me I should shut down Windows. What do I >have to do to get this thing working again? I believe you have to expand the file. There should be an EXPAND.EXE on on of the disks. I don't have the precise details on how to run it, but it's not too tough... I believe you just execute "EXPAND sol.exe". -- +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ : Steven List @ Transact Software, Inc. :^>~ : : Chairman, Unify User Group of Northern California : : itkin@Transact.COM :
ebergman@isis.cs.du.edu (Eric Bergman-Terrell) (06/18/91)
Is it a bear to write MS Windows in C/C++? Well it depends what you're comparing... (I'm currently finishing up a port of a 30,000 line program from DOS to WINDOWS). If you're used to writing programs that simply write to standard output and read from standard input, converting the program from a teletype-style user interface to a GUI user interface will be a big job IF HOWEVER you're used to writing all the GUI code YOURSELF, Windows programing is a breeze. In my DOS program, I wrote all of the dialog box handling code, all of the menu handling code, etc. In other words I wrote the code to put a dialog box on the screen and interpret it. Ditto for menus. What a chore! (yes I know that there are libraries out there). Anyway it was a joy to move the program over to Windows, THROW AWAY my printer drivers (the three I wrote took maybe 2 weeks each), THROW AWAY my menu manager and dialog box manager, and port the remaining application. Anyway, the punchline is this: if you're used to writing programs that provide a modern user interface, Windows programming will seem easy. If you've yet to step up to drop-down menus, dialog boxes, etc. it will seem more difficult. Note that this isn't a plug for C/C++. Use what works. Terrell