I've been coding for a long time in C and C-like languages (anyone remember Deep Blue C and Action! for the Atari 8-bit machines?) and recently decided to finally upgrade my skill sets to include C++ and move into Windows programming instead of just console apps.
First of all, I'm a "hobbyist coder" and not a professional developer. I write a few console apps now and then to do tasks I need to do. The last program I actually released for others to use was when the Atari and Commodore 8-bits ruled the world.
On the PC, I have used the DevC++ system for many years, and it did what I needed, but since it's no longer supported and quite dated, I decided to move up the food chain a little.
I downloaded NetBeans 7.3.1 with the Cygwin packages, and I can get it to do console apps, but I have been unable to get it to work with the Windows SDK. I messed with it for a week or two, and no real luck.
I then went to the proverbial horse's mouth...I grabbed the Visual C++ 2005 Express. It integrated to the SDK just fine, but I still can't get sample Windows code to compile.
For example...
At
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ff381409%28v=vs.85%29.aspx there is some sample code that builds a simple window, and I did a cut and paste of that code into the Visual C++ editor. When I try to compile and run the code, I get about a dozen errors for unresolved external symbols.
I went through the (great) C++ tutorial here at
http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/ and all the sample code there worked fine for the console apps. But nothing on the MSDN site seems to work with MS's own system.
I suspect I am missing something very simple, but I have no clue what!
Thanks for any help!
Charles