[ay2b]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

A good GUI really wants to have the program written around it, rather than putting a GUI on top of a program.

I agree. What I meant was that I believe one should first learn the structures of the language -- how do pointers work? what are linked lists? what are queues? what are objects? how does inheritance work? etc -- before learning all the GUI functionality. I meant that one would "add GUI programming to their body of knowledge", not that they would "add a GUI on top of an existing program". I probably wasn't clear on that point.

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

The event-driven model adopted by most GUI frameworks is something that needs to be considered from the beginning. If the goal is to write fully-functional and easy-to-use Windows applications, I would suggest starting with the GUI features right away, incorporating the necessary programming idioms and following high-level examples. Once the basic shape of the framework is known and mostly understood, then the task of closely studying the language in context can be fruitful.

Everyone learns differently. In my opinion, the more linear nature of simpler non-GUI programs is easier to understand that the event-based, message passing model of most GUI frameworks. To other programmers, the event-based model might make more sense.