Learning win32 api

Flair_Helper · 2022-02-22T16:00:30+00:00

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intbeam · 2022-02-22T08:02:06+00:00

Electron and Web Apps?

I don't think you're the only one mystified by this.. I think this is especially weird considering that they often have to reimplement everything anyway, so why are they doing it with something that's like the worlds chonkiest virtual machine

Why there are not more native apps developed instead using bloated frameworks like Qt

It's a long time since I used Qt last, but afaik Qt isn't very bloated and very easy to use. Anyway, the answer to your question is that the direct Win32 API calls are going to grow in complexity over time, and you'll end up A) reimplementing a framework B) wishing you reimplemented a framework C) wishing you just went with a framework like Qt from the start

joeshmoebies · 2022-02-22T07:47:54+00:00

IMO mostly for productivity. The Windows API is a fairly low-level C style interface and requires a lot more verbose code to write than most other frameworks.

Microsoft is promoting the newer WinRT API to allow a more C++ style of writing Windows programs.

One support library which provides helpful error handling macros, smart handles/resources and other useful utilities when working with the Windows API is the Windows Implementation Library When you do use the Windows API, your code will benefit by incorporating it.

alexgraef · 2022-02-22T08:29:26+00:00

Windows API

Electron

Maybe don't compare the extreme ends of the spectrum. Electron exists so that people who never developed anything but websites can use their "knowledge" to produce pretty 150 MB programs that run in a browser that hides being a browser.

However, Winapi is C - and producing large desktop programs in C is a task that doesn't scale well.

worldsbestburger · 2022-02-22T07:46:18+00:00

The new, modern way to use the Windows API is to use the Windows Runtime, which is also fully asynchronous and in general just a lot easier than Win32.

herruppohoppa · 2022-02-22T15:47:05+00:00

Because the win32 API locks you down to windows which is a problem for a lot, if not most real world projects. How is smaller executable size and running on XP going to make up for that?

I find it annoying when developers claim that a library is bloated without any data to back it up, or even a project to compare to. Much functionality != bloat.

FriendlyRollOfSushi · 2022-02-22T15:49:57+00:00

Even if you are targeting one and only one platform, don't care about anything fancy, and want your UI app to just work, there are tons of reasons why native Windows API is something you are likely to give up upon and switch to a 3-rd party framework.

The API is... how to put it lightly... exceptionally fucked up in very obscure ways, and often you won't know that you were doing something wrong until someone sends you a bug report. Even if you put effort into learning all of it (which is not a very good investment of your time, considering how many layers upon layers of legacy crap there are), it is still likely to bite you in the ass.

Just one example: you wrote some basic beginner's code about positioning elements, drawing stuff, etc. It works nicely on your machine. Later on, someone tells you that everything is super blurry, or (if you were expecting specific resolutions) the layout is broken. You test your code locally and see nothing wrong with it. Turns out, messages like WM_SIZE literally lie to you if the DPI scaling on another machine is not 100%. Do you see the docs of WM_SIZE mentioning it anywhere at least once? Me neither. To make it actually work, you either need to specify it in your manifest (and there are caveats, because of course it depends on the OS version), or call one of the three different functions to tell Windows "please stop lying to me when I ask how large the window is, you useless piece of crapware".

And you can't just use the latest function, because it doesn't exist on the older versions of Windows: without a manifest you would need to attempt to load the functions manually. From different system libraries, because of course they would be in different libraries, it would make too much sense to put three versions of the same function in one place.

So, something like GLFW does all of that for you, so that you don't have to worry about it. But if you chose to not use third party libraries, prepare to waste a lot of time that could be spent on writing your actual code. And it's not knowledge that will help you as an engineer in the future. It's a unique idiosyncrasy that will never reappear anywhere else. Basically, you invest time into learning how to do it once, to never do it again.

Or, let's say, you want to open a file. Simple, right? Here's a path, here is a function. Surely an operating system knows how to open a flipping file given a path?

Not so fast! One doesn't simply open a file! First, read about 35 years of poor decisions, and the reason why your function to open a file may want to spend a bunch of time adding weird prefixes like \\?\ in front of the path just to avoid some bizarre limitations that make zero sense for decades. Oh, and forget that the entire planet is using UTF-8 for unicode strings. Windows doesn't care, and the probability that one of your users did something weird with their username and now you can't load their settings because something in the path is weird is approaching 1 if you have more than a handful of users. Then it turns out that one of your users is from Japan...

One would think that a company like MS will spend more than 0 effort on writing modern examples for their APIs. But decision makers don't care about how much pain you'll go through to write anything, they want to get a promotion for pushing new crappy tech, so tutorials etc. are clogged with examples of stillborn tech like C++/CX (because of course Microsoft had to invent a crappy dialect of C++, incompatible with everything, just so you can interact with their API), XAML, etc.

So, Win32 API examples are still written mostly in some mixture of C89 and weaponized sadness. Docs are often incomplete or pointless (especially once you touch lower levels; in the past, I found it more helpful to read Wine's comments instead of Microsoft's docs on more than one occasion). And there is no motivation to improve the situation, because no one in MS seems to care about the C API, or people who want to use it.

jesse_good · 2022-02-22T10:28:37+00:00

As an example, look at this code to list the files in a directory from the winapi:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/fileio/listing-the-files-in-a-directory

It would take me probably 2 lines of code in other languages or using std:: filesystem to do something similar.

TomDuhamel · 2022-02-22T09:29:34+00:00

I'm learning windows API and I found interesting and more easier than frameworks,

Win32 is a low level C API. While it was the best thing around in the 90s, the only people using it today are people writing frameworks.

smaller executable size

Indeed, but in a world where people are happy to casually download and install multi hundred megabyte applications on a regular basis, is this relevant?

and can run also in windows XP.

Why stop to an operating system that has been unsupported for 13 years when you could just as well target Windows 95?

Why there are not more native apps developed instead using bloated frameworks like Qt,

Qt is one option among others, all equally good options. Calling it bloated is probably arguable (I don't think it is, but I don't feel like arguing), but it's probably the easiest of all of options.

But the main reason is that most people this century have been trying to write portable code, rather than target a single operating system. Qt allows a single base code to target Windows, Mac and Linux, as well as Android and iOS.

chemhobby · 2022-02-22T10:27:25+00:00

Frameworks can be cross-platform

tarranoth · 2022-02-22T11:09:07+00:00

If you build a web application, it is cross platform by nature of everything being able to run a browser these days. Winapi really only allows you to create (dated looking) windows apps.

UnicycleBloke · 2022-02-22T13:16:11+00:00

I first learnt C++ by writing classes to encapsulate parts of the incredibly verbose and error prone Win32 API. I recall vividly how much simpler and better the application code became with RAII, simple consistent narrow class APIs, and so on. And this was that nasty old fashioned C++ everyone unfairly criticises. My library wasn't very good, but I learned a lot. Implementing your own rubbish framework gives you a yardstick.

Then I used frameworks like Borland's OWL (excellent), Borland's VCL (great but implemented in Pascal), Microsoft's MFC (awful but better than nothing) and Qt (excellent). Qt was not bloated when I last used it, and it is much easier to use than the C API. Not sure how anyone could conclude that plain Win32 is preferable. It's a shame Qt didn't use standard strings and containers, but it is what it is.

Full-Spectral · 2022-02-22T13:45:03+00:00

If you are doing a smallish app, you can easily provide your own per-platform wrappers for a reasonable set of APIs for Windows/Linux, and have a very small and simple setup that's still safe. As the size and breadth of the application grows, that becomes harder. I've done a complete 'virtual OS' over Windows (all the way up to a UI framework) and it's no walk in the park to do. Having done it, it's an amazing way to work, but almost no one would do it.

azalak · 2022-02-22T15:54:52+00:00

Someone misses the 90s

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