Understanding legacy Windows application platforms
With the Microsoft Windows 1.0 release in 1985, the only way to create Windows applications was to use the C language and call functions in three core DLLs named kernel, user, and GDI. Once Windows became 32-bit with Windows 95, the DLLs were suffixed with 32 and became known as the Win32 API.
In 1991, Microsoft introduced Visual Basic, which provided developers a visual, drag and drop from a toolbox of controls way to build the user interface for Windows applications. It was immensely popular, and the Visual Basic runtime is still part of Windows 10 today.
In 2002, Microsoft introduced .NET Framework, which included Windows Forms for building Windows applications. The code could be written in either Visual Basic or C# languages. Windows Forms had a similar drag and drop visual designer, although it generated C# or Visual Basic code to define the user interface, which can be difficult for humans to understand and...
