CsWin32

Thanfully, you don't need to write p/invoke stuff yourself anymore. https://github.com/microsoft/cswin32 creates methods and all related structs for you. It's also AOT compatible (if you specify it). It works for calling C and COM functions. I mean, not like this brings Windows development anywhere close to "modern", if anything, it feels like you're moving into the opposite direction, but at least this solves the "The modern APIs don't provide the specific functionality I need" problem that plagues all of Microsoft's "nice", "modern" abstractions…

You can do a lot of "native" windows development from modern C#/.NET via win32 interop. Newer C# features like ref returns, structs, spans, et. al., make the overhead undetectable in many cases. https://github.com/prasannavl/WinApi https://github.com/microsoft/CsWin32

Interestingly, the Rust windows crate is generated from an MSIL assembly. And same metadata might be used to generate C# bindings thanks to cswin32 [1] project. The meta-assembly generation (Win32 metadata project) is based on clangsharp and it's fairly straightforward to generate interop code for native Windows libraries. Some time ago I described this process on my blog for the detours library [2] [1] https://github.com/microsoft/CsWin32 [2] https://lowleveldesign.org/2023/11/23/generating-c-bindings-...

If you do have headers, you don't have to write the bindings by hand: https://github.com/dotnet/ClangSharp?tab=readme-ov-file#gene... Also because this is Windows, there is https://github.com/microsoft/CsWin32 already (and adjacent libraries) which rely on the same generator.

I feel that nowadays Rust is the language to go when you are doing system programming, but C# is not a bad choice either. With .NET 9 being released in a few weeks we will get NativeAOT (compilation to a native single binary) for x86 (x64 and ARM64 are already available). At work, I'm writing patches for legacy apps and needed to use C++ for most of my tasks. Nowadays, I'm doing more and more stuff in C# and enjoying it. For WinAPI there is a fantastic cswin32 [1] project that generates FFIs signatures on the fly. And it's fairly simple to extend it for other Windows libraries (I did it for detours [2], for example). And using pointers or working with native memory blocks is straightforward and intuitive for people with C/C++ background. [1] https://github.com/microsoft/CsWin32 [2] https://lowleveldesign.wordpress.com/2024/07/11/implement

What language do you program in? You can use CsWin32[0] and CsWinRT[1] both of which provide rich generated bindings for their respective APIs. A colleague of mine recently got rid of C++ component thanks to the former, simplifying the solution build. [0]: https://github.com/microsoft/CsWin32 [1]: https://github.com/microsoft/CsWinRT

None of this is a part of .NET itself, rather a part of ecosystem of its libraries, like ASP.NET Core, EF Core, etc. Again: it is not a part of the language or runtime. If you do, however, have links to code changes that prove otherwise - please do post them. Meanwhile, COM interests only a limited part of community, and there also exists actively maintained https://github.com/microsoft/CsWin32 A popular (if not the most, depending on location) choice to use EF Core with is PostgreSQL. Meanwhile, ASP.NET Core simply continues to evolve just like other libraries, whether they are a part of dotnet/* or not. GUI continues to get better with development of AvaloniaUI, Uno and MAUI. .NET as a whole is way bigger than some of it's "first-party" solutions that you don't even have to use, that have little impact on language, runtime and compiler

You're bringing back waves of nostalgia. I used to frequently read AllAPI.net and come up with mischievous implementations for my own amusement. A quick Google Search netted the following project (https://github.com/microsoft/CsWin32). Looks like my evening is gone.