On Windows, almost every "new" API is built on top of Win32. Obviously, if you're writing a simple CRUD application, you'll never need to go down there. (You'l

On Windows, almost every "new" API is built on top of Win32. Obviously, if you're writing a simple CRUD application, you'll never need to go down there. (You'll probably make a browser application or an Electron application.) But if you're doing something unique, like a utility, or trying to hook into the OS to make it do something new, you gotta work at the lower level APIs. And, yes, I shipped a product that included a Windows driver this year. It required working at the Win32 level in user-mode to communicate with the driver, and to test the driver. Windows recently added a new API to Windows 10 that eliminated the need for a driver, but we still had customers on Windows 7. Even then, that new API is technically Win32.