There’s no guide because nobody wants to learn Windows Desktop programming anymore. The Web has taken over everything, even use cases where it shouldn’t, becau

There’s no guide because nobody wants to learn Windows Desktop programming anymore. The Web has taken over everything, even use cases where it shouldn’t, because it’s a career dead-end. The IDE is complicated because it’s an evolution of 30 years. As for the UI: - Win32: This is the C library for creating and manipulating Windows. This library is foundational. - WinForms: .NET abstraction around Win32. Event-driven design. Every UI component is effectively a Window. Very rich and complete; hard to write unit tests for; easy to peel away the abstraction. Never going away. - WPF: Reimagined UI library. Addresses the many limitations of WinForms. Inspired by HTML; steeper learning curve; designed to separate display from display logic, making unit testing a very possible. Every year, someone asks if WPF is dead.