What to use to write Windows GUI C++ application to get minimum size?

Question

User interface

We need to write a dialog-based application to be as small as possible.

I started writing in bare C ++ without using MFC (with it, even an empty application turns out to be 3 megabytes, which is a lot), but I thought, maybe there are some "light" "helpers" so that we can more adequately catch events and manage the state element (without catching WM_COMMAND, processing context in WM_PAINT, and so on)?

Answer 1

It's strange that no one advised ATL, it's exactly what I wanted. I'm using non-COM ATL classes/templates and am happy.

Answer 2

Of course, I don’t see the point, but keep https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Template_Library
Practically the same in terms of the event model with MFC, and in principle, you can port the code.
But taking into account the fact that now NET is everywhere, and the size of applications starts from 14 Kb
It is better to use it.