3 ms·

If you look at more recent Windows APIs, I'm really thankful that the traditional Win32 APIs still work. On average the older APIs are much nicer to work with.

alt227 2y ago
> On average the older APIs are much nicer to work with IMO this is because they are better written, by people who had deeper understanding of the entire OS picture and cared more about writing performant and maintainable code.
- xeonmc 2y ago
  Well-illustrated in the article “How Microsoft Lost the API War”[0]: The Raymond Chen Camp believes in making things easy for developers by making it easy to write once and run anywhere (well, on any Windows box). The MSDN Magazine Camp believes in making things easy for developers by giving them really powerful chunks of code which they can leverage, if they are willing to pay the price of incredibly complicated deployment and installation headaches, not to mention the huge learning curve. The Raymond Chen camp is all about consolidation. Please, don’t make things any worse, let’s just keep making what we already have still work. The MSDN Magazine Camp needs to keep churning out new gigantic pieces of technology that nobody can keep up with. [0] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost-the-api-war/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost...
  - jimbokun 2y ago
    > making things easy for developers by giving them really powerful chunks of code which they can leverage, if they are willing to pay the price of incredibly complicated deployment and installation headaches, not to mention the huge learning curve. I feel the same way about Spring development for Java. Also reminds me of: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy/ https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy/
bboygravity 2y ago
Nicer to work with? I can't think of any worse API in the entire world?
- sirwhinesalot 2y ago
  The various WinRT APIs are even worse. At least Win32 is "battle tested"
- flohofwoe 2y ago
  There are some higher level COM APIs which are not exactly great, but the core Win32 DLL APIs (kernel32, user32, gdi32) are quite good, also the DirectX APIs after ca 2002 (e.g. since D3D9) - because even though the DirectX APIs are built on top of COM, they are designed in a somewhat sane way (similar to how there are 'sane' and 'messy' C++ APIs). Especially UWP and its successors (I think it's called WinRT now?) are objectively terrible.
  - OvbiousError 2y ago
    I've had to work with api functions like https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/winuser/nf-winuser-enumchildwindows https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/winuser/... and friends. It was by far the most unpleasant api I've ever worked with.
    - frabert 2y ago
      I think that particular pattern is a perfectly reasonable way to let the user ingest an arbitrarily long list of objects without having to do any preallocations -- or indeed, any allocations at all.
      - mananaysiempre 2y ago
        Yes, but the inversion of control is unpleasant to deal with—compare Find{First,Next}File which don’t require that.

alt227 2y ago

> On average the older APIs are much nicer to work with IMO this is because they are better written, by people who had deeper understanding of the entire OS picture and cared more about writing performant and maintainable code.

xeonmc 2y ago
Well-illustrated in the article “How Microsoft Lost the API War”[0]: The Raymond Chen Camp believes in making things easy for developers by making it easy to write once and run anywhere (well, on any Windows box). The MSDN Magazine Camp believes in making things easy for developers by giving them really powerful chunks of code which they can leverage, if they are willing to pay the price of incredibly complicated deployment and installation headaches, not to mention the huge learning curve. The Raymond Chen camp is all about consolidation. Please, don’t make things any worse, let’s just keep making what we already have still work. The MSDN Magazine Camp needs to keep churning out new gigantic pieces of technology that nobody can keep up with. [0] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost-the-api-war/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost...
- jimbokun 2y ago
  > making things easy for developers by giving them really powerful chunks of code which they can leverage, if they are willing to pay the price of incredibly complicated deployment and installation headaches, not to mention the huge learning curve. I feel the same way about Spring development for Java. Also reminds me of: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy/ https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy/

bboygravity 2y ago

Nicer to work with? I can't think of any worse API in the entire world?

sirwhinesalot 2y ago
The various WinRT APIs are even worse. At least Win32 is "battle tested"
flohofwoe 2y ago
There are some higher level COM APIs which are not exactly great, but the core Win32 DLL APIs (kernel32, user32, gdi32) are quite good, also the DirectX APIs after ca 2002 (e.g. since D3D9) - because even though the DirectX APIs are built on top of COM, they are designed in a somewhat sane way (similar to how there are 'sane' and 'messy' C++ APIs). Especially UWP and its successors (I think it's called WinRT now?) are objectively terrible.
- OvbiousError 2y ago
  I've had to work with api functions like https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/winuser/nf-winuser-enumchildwindows https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/winuser/... and friends. It was by far the most unpleasant api I've ever worked with.
  - frabert 2y ago
    I think that particular pattern is a perfectly reasonable way to let the user ingest an arbitrarily long list of objects without having to do any preallocations -- or indeed, any allocations at all.
    - mananaysiempre 2y ago
      Yes, but the inversion of control is unpleasant to deal with—compare Find{First,Next}File which don’t require that.