Does it still make sense to learn low level WinAPI programming? [closed]

Answer 1

Learning C or a lower level language can definitely be useful. However, I don't see any obvious advantage in using the unmanaged WinAPI.

Answer 2

yes. take a look at uTorrent, an amazing piece of software efficiency. Half of it's small size is due to the fact that much of it's core components were re-written to not use gargatuian libraries.

Much of this couldn't be done without understanding how these libraries interface with the lower level API's

Answer 3

If you planning to develop a cross platform application, If you use win32, then your application could easily run on linux through WINE. This results in a highly maintainable application. This is one of the advantages of learning win32.

Answer 4

Simple answer, YES.

Answer 5

On the assumption that you're building apps targeted at Windows:

• it can sure be informative to understand lower levels of the system - how they work, how your code interacts with them (even if only indirectly), and where you have additional options that aren't available in the higher-level abstractions
• there are times when your code might not be as efficient, high-performance or precise enough for your requirements
• However, in more and more cases, folks like us (who never learned "unmanaged coding") will be able to pull off the programming we're trying to do without "learning" Win32.
• Further, there's plenty of sites that provide working samples, code fragments and even fully-functional source code that you can "leverage" (borrow, plagiarize - but check that you're complying with any re-use license or copyright!) to fill in any gaps that aren't handled by the .NET framework class libraries (or the libraries that you can download or license).
• If you can pull off the feats you need without messing around in Win32, and you're doing a good job of developing well-formed, readable managed code, then I'd say mastering .NET would be a better choice than spreading yourself thin over two very different environments.
• If you frequently need to leverage those features of Windows that haven't received good Framework class library coverage, then by all means, learn the skills you need.
• I've personally spent far too much time worrying about the "other areas" of coding that I'm supposed to understand to produce "good programs", but there's plenty of masochists out there that think everyone's needs and desires are like their own. Misery loves company. :)

On the assumption that you're building apps for the "Web 2.0" world, or that would be just as useful/beneficial to *NIX & MacOS users:

• Stick with languages and compilers that target as many cross-platform environments as possible.
• pure .NET in Visual Studio is better than Win32 obviously, but developing against the MONO libraries, perhaps using the Sharp Develop IDE, is probably an even better approach.
• you could also spend your time learning Java, and those skills would transfer very well to C# programming (plus the Java code would theoretically run on any platform with the matching JRE). I've heard it said that Java is more like "write once, debug everywhere", but that's probably as true as (or even moreso than) C#.

Answer 6

The native APIs are the "real" operating system APIs. The .NET library is (with few exceptions) nothing more than a fancy wrapper around them. So yes, I'd say that anybody who can understand .NET with all its complexity, can understand relatively mundane things like talking to the API without the benefit of a middle-man.

Just try to do DLL Injection from managed code. It can't be done. You will be forced to write native code for this, for windowing tweaks, for real subclassing, and a dozen other things.

So yes: you should (must) know both.

Edit: even if you plan to use P/Invoke.