Charles Petzold

How long does it take to write a thousand-page programming tutorial? I began the 6th edition of Programming Windows on February 27, 2012, and subsequently worked on it pretty much full time except for the monthly installments of my MSDN Magazine column. I finished reviewing pages on the last day of 2012 and emailed the ZIP file containing all the C# and C++ sample code to my editor on the morning of January 17, 2013, officially concluding my work.

Which means that it's my pleasure to announce that the final Programming Windows 6th edition ebook and Companion Content ZIP file are now available on the O'Reilly website:

Programming Windows, 6th edition

A print edition is coming soon, but I don't know the exact release date. I suspect the book's thickness will be somewhat greater than those calipers suggest.

If you already paid for the ebook — perhaps being one of the really smart people who bought it back in May 2012 when it was only $10 — you can simply go to the book page on the O'Reilly site and download the final version. But even if you're a new buyer, Programming Windows 6th edition is well worth the modest price tag. It encapsulates about 10 months of my labor and contains lots of good stuff.

The total PDF page count is 1136, but of course some of that is pictures and code listings. Here's what the PDF version of the book looks like in the "semantic zoom" view in the Windows 8 Reader app running on a 1920 x 1080 monitor: