[c#] Use of Application.DoEvents()

I've seen many commercial applications, using the "DoEvents-Hack". Especially when rendering comes into play, I often see this:

while(running)
{
    Render();
    Application.DoEvents();
}

They all know about the evil of that method. However, they use the hack, because they don't know any other solution. Here are some approaches taken from a blog post by Tom Miller:

  • Set your form to have all drawing occur in WmPaint, and do your rendering there. Before the end of the OnPaint method, make sure you do a this.Invalidate(); This will cause the OnPaint method to be fired again immediately.
  • P/Invoke into the Win32 API and call PeekMessage/TranslateMessage/DispatchMessage. (Doevents actually does something similar, but you can do this without the extra allocations).
  • Write your own forms class that is a small wrapper around CreateWindowEx, and give yourself complete control over the message loop. -Decide that the DoEvents method works fine for you and stick with it.