The lead architect of the VCL went-on to work for Microsoft on .Net and most of the venerable (and still working, if not actively maintained) Winforms API is really reminiscent of the VCL, albeit corrupted by the win32 API leaking through.
Maybe it is rose-tinted glasses, but I remember having a significantly more pleasant experience working wight the VCL (through C++ Builder) than with Winforms.
Maybe it is rose-tinted glasses, but I remember having a significantly more pleasant experience working wight the VCL (through C++ Builder) than with Winforms.