book

[adam2016]

hi guys I'm thinking of buying window programming 5th eddition by Charles Petzold the only problem is it's a pretty old book,so I'm wondering will the code in the book still work,has some of the functions been deleted or updated in the windows API since this book?

thanks

[Thomas1965]

The Win API has not changed that much over the years. There are some new topics that are not covered like GDI+, but once you understand the basics you should be able to learn the newer stuff from MSDN or other articles. Just be warned that the Win API is written in C not C++
Might be good if you know some C++ and when playing with the examples try to use some C++ features like strings.

I have compiled many examples with VS 2015
Normally the easiest way is to delete the old project files and create a new project from existing sources.

[adam2016]

hi Thomas that's great to hear =) I plan on getting the book and starting asap,

just a follow up and I need some advice,I have a good understanding of most concepts in c++ well the core concepts I want to be able to use and understand that windows book written in C but use it in my cpp files

anyway I want to be able to bridge the gap before building things with windows.h

so heres what I know I have a good understanding of the following

variables
namespaces
functions
arrays
data structures such as linked list,doubly linked list and binary search trees
basic input/output
classes
structs
const keyword
composition
polymorphism
recursion
basic knowledge how the linker works
basic knowledge how dll's and lib files are used
friend functions
basic knowledge unions
basic knowlegde of copy constructors
basic knowledge of operator overloading
know a little bit of the STL
strings
iteration
decent logic
return types
modifies such as static
enums
touched on and I mean briefly touched on SDL
conditional statements
header files
pointers
references

what I want to do is write something useful,that will build my knowledge,something low level would be great

if anybody could give me suggestions on what I could build or what I should try build with the knowledge I have above and how I can piece them togheter would be great,

I have quite a lot of time and help would me really appreciated if possible,I am eager to get better,

thanks

[Thomas1965]

what I want to do is write something useful

How can we know what is useful for you? It depends on your interests and what kind of programs or games you use.

One of the first bigger programs I wrote was a program to store football results, do statistics on them create different tables....
Another one was an editor that did a lot of search and replace and formatting so I easily could copy some short stories from the net and made it easier to convert it to epub.
These are usefult for me but useless for others.