getting started

[Glen Kaukola]

Hi everyone,

I forget who's advice it was I took, but I went out and bought a few 
books on windows programming. And I plan to get started trying to help 
out with the wine project by trying to get the sample applications from 
the books to run under wine.  If nothing else I guess I can let everyone 
know what it is I can't get working under wine (hopefully everyone 
welcomes that sort of input).

So what I'm wondering now is what I should be using to compile my 
applications on windows.  One of the books I have says all I need is the 
win32 sdk and I can compile apps.  The closest thing I can find on msdn 
is the microsoft platform sdk, or perhaps the .net sdk.  I've installed 
the microsoft platform sdk core but it doesn't seem to contain nmake.exe 
like the book I have talks about.  So maybe I just need more pieces of 
the sdk?  Or maybe I've installed the wrong thing entirely?

I know of some other things I could use like borland's compiler or the 
bloodshed ide, that uses mingw I believe, but I was thinking it might be 
better if I stuck with microsoft development apps so everything happens 
the microsoft way in my programs.  So maybe I just need to take one for 
the team and go out and buy visual studio?

Thanks in advance,
Glen