I’m starting a new series of articles that will examine how Windows application development has evolved over the years. This may be too technical for some readers, and perhaps not technical enough for the developers in the audience. But this is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, and I believe that you can’t truly understand any platform—and in this case, how that platform has evolved over time—unless you understand how to create software for it.

No, I’m not going to teach you how to write software. As I write this in 2019, I’m about 20 years removed from my heyday as a software developer, though I continue to devote a lot of time to this endeavor, at least from a high-level, enthusiast perspective. But I’m no expert.