It depends a bit on your language bindings, if you look at say a python example: https://about-prog.com/en/articles/python/hello_world_sdl2 https://about-prog.

It depends a bit on your language bindings, if you look at say a python example: https://about-prog.com/en/articles/python/hello_world_sdl2 https://about-prog.com/en/articles/python/hello_world_sdl2 Its basically, grab a window, show it, grab a render/draw buffer update it and make it visible. I don't really find the base C version much more complex, although it does have a bit of boilerplate around init/window creation/grab surface/display surface/etc. I'm not sure I would consider that particularly complex. Sure SDL can get complex when you start trying to use GL/etc but if all you want is a buffer to write bytes that become pixels its pretty straightforward IMHO. I would say its roughly the same level of complexity (if not less) than HTML canvas+JS.