The author is nuts, and so are many commenters here echoing their viewpoint.
The steps are
1. Download and install Visual Studio (author says C# - that's one checkbox to set in the installer)
2. Launch it and click make new -> desktop application
3. Hit F5
The rest is a self inflicted wound.
20GB for arguably the best IDE of the last decade may be a problem for a high schooler in a very poor country, but everyone else here, all supporters of this post included, should have no issue with it (unless also self-inflicted).
1 min build is basically a lie for launching a hello world app with F5. I doubt it will take more than 5 seconds on any machine.
The steps are simpler because you know what you're doing, The guide from Microsoft told me to download 5 different products and download the Windows App SDK as an independent component. That was 20GB plus other MBs for the SDK. When I hit F5, it downloaded so many dependencies. It took minutes and the App was using a constant 56mb of memory while doing absolutely nothing (no events, no background threads nada) might as well use Electron.
It is important to note that I was trying to create a WinUI3 app.
WPF hello world app gonna build in couple seconds on any machine.
WinUI3 is a mess. I have a fast desktop PC, first time it took longer than 1 minute. BTW, the installation package size for “Hello world” app made from the default template is 92.6 MB without dependencies, and 139MB with a few dependent libraries.
So I would guess the problem is WinUI3? I develop Windows GUI apps for fun in my spare time -- I've built some pretty big and complicated ones using WPF/C# and the issues described by the OP don't seem real. My machine is old as hell and my build times are mostly unnoticeable, for example.
I think the worst offender is the new packaging system used by WinUI3. The default project template creates a solution with 2 projects, the windows app itself, and the package. They including .NET runtime into packages, but for some reason VC++ runtime, and WinUI3 libraries, are shipped separately as OS-wide redistributables. Despite .NET compile sources into CPU-agnostic MSIL bytecode, the final result, the *.msixbundle file, contains an independent package for each CPU architecture. Unless touching checkboxes in VS during publish, gonna be two of them, Win32 and Win64.
> I've built some pretty big and complicated ones using WPF/C#
I do that too for living, WPF is awesome in comparison.
The steps are
1. Download and install Visual Studio (author says C# - that's one checkbox to set in the installer)
2. Launch it and click make new -> desktop application
3. Hit F5
The rest is a self inflicted wound.
20GB for arguably the best IDE of the last decade may be a problem for a high schooler in a very poor country, but everyone else here, all supporters of this post included, should have no issue with it (unless also self-inflicted).
1 min build is basically a lie for launching a hello world app with F5. I doubt it will take more than 5 seconds on any machine.