With its multitasking and multithreading API, Win32 revolutionized programming for Microsoft Windows. If you've seen magazine articles and advanced programming books on these subjects, you might have been intimidated by the complexity of using multiple threads. You could stick with single-threaded programming for a long time and still write useful Win32 applications. If you learn the fundamentals of threads, however, you'll be able to write more efficient and capable programs. You'll also be on your way to a better understanding of the Win32 programming model.