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Ask HN: Can anyone recommend a Windows Systems programming book?

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Re: Ask HN: Can anyone recommend a Windows Systems programming book?

#11

Post by deaddodo »

The reason you're not getting a good answer is because the ultimate answer is to just use Microsoft's Documentation:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/get-started/s...

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/

It covers near everything, is extremely exhaustive, and constantly updated. That being said, if you're more interested in how the Windows API is organized/works internally (why you have to give it handles/resources and what those mean, for instance), then Charles Petzold's series is generally considered the definitive resource:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JDMP71S/

Re: Ask HN: Can anyone recommend a Windows Systems programming book?

#12

Post by Nevolihs »

explaingarlic wrote: post #4

The Windows Internals series is typically the go-to for what you're looking for. Combine with MSDN browsing to determine what you want to do and how you want to do it.

MSDN and that book are great https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/resources/win...

A lot of useful links on that page for additional reading.

Repo for the tools used in the book https://github.com/zodiacon/WindowsInternals which are invaluable

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/resources/

Re: Ask HN: Can anyone recommend a Windows Systems programming book?

#13

Post by steve1977 »

What exactly do you consider systems programming, i.e. what would you like to achieve?

Windows is not open source, so unless you work for Microsoft, you won’t really be doing much “real” systems programming probably.

Do you want to program applications? Windows services? Device drivers?

Re: Ask HN: Can anyone recommend a Windows Systems programming book?

#17

Post by pjc50 »

brudgers wrote: post #2

.NET has been the standard interface at Windows system level for many years. The ".NET languages," particularly C# will provide much less friction than .cpp (or Nim). For no other reason than the quantity and quality of tutorials and documentation written by technical experts and edited by technical editors who are getting paid to write and edit from line items in Microsoft's regular operational budgets. Or to put it…

Depends what you mean by "system", but there's plenty of the Win32 API that's not exposed by first-party packages in dotnet (e.g. audio). It's certainly the most convenient way to write an application (once you get over the UI toolkit disaster area), but "systems" programming might also include drivers.

Re: Ask HN: Can anyone recommend a Windows Systems programming book?

#18

Post by trimethylpurine »

lukan wrote: post #7
cnity wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're recommending that OP uses an abstraction over the system. It takes their X problem and makes it a Y problem instead (because they won't learn systems that way)!

Yes, but he or she is giving convincing sounding reasons that might be helpful for the op. Maybe it is actually better for OP to learn .net, maybe not. But the answer had quality, so I do not think the downvotes are appropriate.

While I think the intentions of the voting system are for marking low quality, as you've said, I think in practice most downvoters are using it to mark their disagreement.

There's something interesting about that; it implies that grey text signifies a non-conformist view and approach to a technical issue. As is the case here.

I like to skip to the grey text.

Re: Ask HN: Can anyone recommend a Windows Systems programming book?

#19

Post by iKlsR »

deaddodo wrote: post #11

The reason you're not getting a good answer is because the ultimate answer is to just use Microsoft's Documentation: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/ https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/get-started/s... https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/ It covers near everything, is extremely exhaustive, and constantly updated. That being said, if you're more interested in how the Windows…

I remember reading a funny story somewhere recently that back in the day, ms developers intentionally left gaps in the docs or straight up didn't document certain apis etc so they could put them in their books and sell those so if you were working on certain things you'd be forced to buy said books.

Re: Ask HN: Can anyone recommend a Windows Systems programming book?

#20

Post by _mlbt »

rlawson wrote: post #15

Programming Windows - Petzold

Just a warning, that the very latest edition of this book is a complete rewrite for WinRT and Windows 8. It’s still a great book, but you’ll probably want the previous edition to learn how to code traditional Win32 programs.
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