Question

I want to start a Process Manager project in C and it’s suppose to have a Graphical User Interface. It’s my first GUI project and I have no idea about it. After some searches I found that I should use winapi32 libraries.

My question is:

Should I write my project like a Console-based one and then I add GUI to it or I should think about GUI at beginning of my project?

Answer 1

I would like to say that it’s best to write the application as a command line application, then write a wrapper in GUI. This way you get the most flexible application with a total separation between the GUI and functionality.

But I won’t say it! 🙂
From my experience it’s very difficult to totally seperate the GUI from the application, and thus you should built it with GUI in mind. Your code must open windows, report progress, react upon GUI events, so you must be well familiar with the GUI system you use.

But you must also maintain a separation between the GUI and the functionality as much as you can. For example, make your callbacks short, and direct the funcionality to non-GUI parts of the application. If you need to report progress during long calculation, pass a callback to the calculation algorithm instead of mixing GUI progress commands within the algorithm.

You also must bear in mind that most (if not all) GUI system can do GUI commands only within the main application thread, and build the program accodingly.

So in summary – yes, think about GUI at the beginning, it will be easier this way, but also keep a good separation between the GUI and the functionality,