C++/CLR Windows Forms for Visual Studio 2019

This extension extends Visual Studio 2019 by C++ Windows Forms projects. Applications created by such projects have a graphical user interface.

For more details, see here.

C++ Windows forms projects are an easy way to create programs with a graphical user interface in C++.

The programming language is C++ for the business logic and C++/CLI (a C++ dialect) for the graphical user interface.

C++ Windows Forms projects are great for learning C++. Visual C++ for Windows Forms has nearly all standard C++ (C++11/C++14/C++17) language features. Since the programs are not restricted to a simple console for user interaction, they are more attractive, more flexible and much easier to use.

Of course, you can also write serious C++ applications.

My introductory textbook (in German) teaches C++ from the scratch, using C++ Windows forms. It focuses standard C++, not C++/CLI. The main difference between the examples from this book and a traditional C++ textbook is, that instead of using the console for user interaction

cout << "Hello world" << endl;

you can use a Windows control, e.g. a TextBox

textBox1->AppendText("Hello World");