Even though I’ve been working through a C# book about WinForms, which I’m half way done with, I still don’t feel like I’m working productively and I hate the negative feeling it’s giving me.

It’s going to sound stupid but it’s making me feel like I’m not spending enough time programming even though I’ve been programming quite a bit this week. I mean the small apps aren’t practical they’re just for learning how it all works but still. Im not reading the book for learning the programming logic it’s for the WinForms knowledge.

I think it’s just that I want to make progress on my main project and just have a 4+ hour coding session.

Building for learning is cool and all but you learn far more by building something that's actually useful, especially for yourself.

Eg. Recently I thought I'd learn a bit of android app dev because I have literally no application programming in my skillset. I wanted a tiny, minimal code editor that could run small snippets in any popular language. So I built that as my first app and it ended up having a ton of stuff - layouts, custom text editing callbacks, undo/redo system, syntax highlighting, calling rest APIs, theming, etc. Not everything works properly yet, of course (or is implemented) but I've actually spent hours using that editor productively, makes it immensely satisfying.

> I still don’t feel like I’m working productively and I hate the negative feeling it’s giving me

That's usually how it is when you work in winforms in my experience

If you're already proficient in C# picking up winforms shouldn't be that much of a challenge. There isn't that much to it.

However, if you're using this to learn C# I'd suggest you focus your efforts on something more relevant such as WebAPI or MVC.

@RememberMe I intend to build something practical I just want to finish the book first lmao

@inaba I’m enjoying WinForms I know that’s not what’s causing it.

@delegate212 I’m somewhat proficientwith C# so I’m breezing through the book

@Bubbles

Its good to know if you work with .NET or plan to. There is always legacy apps kicking about.

I miss winforms dev its how I learnt development initially in VB.NET then C#.

@delegate212 I’ll eventually learn WPF when I get a book on it

@StefanH yeah, it’s just so I know the WinForm syntax so I’m not constantly looking everything up.

But I’ve basically been just summarizing each concept/feature of the chapter in one little program. So even if I can’t remember I can peek at that one

My opinion only, don’t be too rude !
Well, WinForms is a particular beast. It’s the best framework in the world for small, onetime coded projects. Just make a form of the size you want, remove all resize/maximize functionality. Slack buttons/labels etc on it and you are done. 15 minutes and you only writing logic code, not UI code.
But for projects, which grow bigger and need to be maintained it is the absolute worse.
I would suggest looking at WPF for these types of projects. (DO NOT EVER TOUCH TO UWP. It just not worth it. APIs are so bad… I don’t have any words)

@NoToJavaScript I see it as C#’s version of Python’s Tkinter. Which is great for simple software, like you said nothing fucking huge or complex.

I’ll definitely practically use WinForms for simple applications that need a GUI. I do enjoy it, although I personally wish it didn’t do so much work for me behind the scenes.

@Bubbles Well, you can code it by hand from a console app :) (true story). Here is example of a little app I made for work. (It goes fetching Applicationj Insight data and just generates an Excel. Azure portal is limited to 10.000 lines. This particular beast generates up to 1000.000, sometimes needed).

Nothing fancy, half in french, half in english. Didn't even changed the title lol

@NoToJavaScript was this with the .NET Core 3 previews?

@Bubbles At my last knowledge, WinForms is not available in .Net core.
May be in a 3.0, I didn’t check.

Edit : oh yeah, there is something

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/...

@NoToJavaScript it is in 3.0 just not on MacOS & Linux

@Bubbles Nice to know,

I'll port this little project for fun :)

@Bubbles I found that :

https://github.com/nopara73/...

I have no idea if it is worth it, but seems to support MacOS and Linux as well, based on libui (I never heared of)

https://github.com/andlabs/libui

@NoToJavaScript I need to port some CLI apps I wrote to WinForms. Luckily the applications I make are relatively simple when it comes to how I design the UI

@NoToJavaScript I assumed there was some sort of third party/opensource GUI libs for MacOS and Linux so I never worried about that