If you wanted to write a java client, you would link against the desktop-lib\networktables-desktop.jar . Should be easy.
If you want to write a python client, you would install the
pynetworktables binary for your version of python, and run the
sample code. Should be easy.
If you want to write a C++ client, you need to extract the right pieces out of WPILib, fix them so they compile on a desktop, and then link all of that together. Not easy. You can use the NetworkTables components from
RobotPy patched version of wpilib which (together with pynetworktables-specific patches can be compiled on a desktop), but it's still not going to be trivial.