Simple Windows Development Tools?

fwc asks: "Over the past few years, I've been fortunate to be able to avoid writing a Windows GUI application, however this good luck is coming to an end. In the next few weeks, I need to write a fairly simple application which will need to display data received from a serial port in a decoded (and graphical) form via a Windows GUI. Unfortunately, my skills in this area are out of date, since I haven't written any GUI apps for close to 10 years. Because this program needs to be fairly small and easy to install, the use of Perl/tk isn't a valid option. What options do I have to build a small application on Windows, without a large learning curve?"

Comments

Visual Basic

[Sarlok]

It's easy to learn and the GUI designer is also easy to use. What's more, with the new (2005) version, there is a free "Express" edition that you can download from Microsoft.

Re:VB

[Fallus Shempus]

I'd agree from a complete programming novice
but you've got a nice free choice (as long as it's not commercial code)
if you have more experiance (especially C++)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/

Try Realbasic

[Quiet_Desperation]

I do mountains of Windows GUI crap to control my hardware designs via serial port and Ethernet. Realbasic makes it all easy and it's not as annoying as Visual Basic. Nicely object oriented. Even file i/o is OO.

http://realbasic.com/