On Tue, 30 Jan 2018 05:56:51 +0000, DanielG wrote: > Then there's all the modern Microsoft stuff (WPF/XAML/WinRT/etc), > but you pretty much have to use either .NET or C++ for that.
VS release builds compile to native now by default; for easy Windows programming, you really can't beat C# and drawing the GUI (Windows Forms, not necessarily the new stuff). If the OP wants to learn what's needed for more complex GUI tasks (like for most non-simple applications), learning to build a GUI from source is kind of necessary though. If/when .NET Core becomes something people can rely on and are willing to try, I think we'll see more people using C# outside the enterprise; you get easy when you want it, power when you need it, native code generation on Windows, and OS portability.