There’s a trend of building services where a monolithic application is
better suited, or using JavaScript and Python then being stumped by their
troublesome deployment story. This leads to solutions like bundling an
entire web browser with an application, or using containers to
circumscribe a sprawling dependency tree made of mystery meat.
My small development distribution for Windows, w64devkit,
is my own little way of pushing back against this trend where it affects
me most. Following in the footsteps of projects like Handmade Hero
and Making a Video Game from Scratch, this is my guide to
no-nonsense software development using my development kit. It’s an
overview of the tooling and development workflow, and I’ve tried not to
assume too much knowledge of the reader. Being a guide rather than manual,
it is incomplete on its own, and I link to substantial external resources
to fill in the gaps. The guide is capped with a small game I wrote
entirely using my development kit, serving as a demonstration of what
sorts of things are not only possible, but quite reasonably attainable.