There's a hundred of these and I want something well-written. I'm primarily using Nim but a C/C++ book wouldn't hurt. Ideally it would have lots of exercises.
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?
#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 another way, picking languages takes exploration of Windows system programing from an X problem to an XY problem. Good luck.
Re: Ask HN: Can anyone recommend a Windows Systems programming book?
#3[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Can anyone recommend a Windows Systems programming book?
#4The 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.
Re: Ask HN: Can anyone recommend a Windows Systems programming book?
#5.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…
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)!
Re: Ask HN: Can anyone recommend a Windows Systems programming book?
#6.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…
Not sure if the systems programming mentioned by the OP includes drivers, but AFAIK the standard language for drivers is C/C++. Not that it's impossible to use C# (see https://github.com/ZeroLP/WDK.NET), but it's not necessarily the most widely used approach.
Re: Ask HN: Can anyone recommend a Windows Systems programming book?
#7.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…
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.
Re: Ask HN: Can anyone recommend a Windows Systems programming book?
#8.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…
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)!
Depends on the objective of OP. Abstractions always leak some of the underlying capabilities so you could use them as a more beginner friendly approach to get acquainted with the system while doing something useful or fun.
For related examples, you can learn Ruby just by learning Rails. Or in more general aspect, the web technology stack through a modern web framework.
Re: Ask HN: Can anyone recommend a Windows Systems programming book?
#9.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…
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)!
Not entirely true, Native Interop is pretty good with DotNet https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/native-int...
Though I believe it has regressed at least a bit with the introduction of DotNet Core.
Re: Ask HN: Can anyone recommend a Windows Systems programming book?
#10What kind of systems programming are you interested in? A sibling comment already mentioned Windows Internals, but that's really about the architecture of the Windows kernel. If you want to write applications, you probably want to read something about the Windows API?