Library tutorials & articles

API Programming Series #1

What are the cons?

I guess I went a bit overboard in praising the API. Because, for all its advantages, API programming does have some critical disadvantages.

  • First of all there is the learning curve. An equivalent of our simple MsgBox function has parameters that would require the services of a qualified astrologer to make sense of, if you are a newbie.
  • It is much less forgiving of programmer errors and it is child's play to crash your application or your system with a malformed API call. And certain API calls when (im) properly used can even render your system unbootable or worse.
  • Then, true to Microsoft tradition some API calls do not work as advertised.
  • [Editors Note]If you eventually start programming with the .net framework, api calls become a legacy; API is windows specific, and - believe it or not - the .NET framework is intended to be platform independant[/Editors Note]

 

Comments

  1. 31 May 2007 at 18:41

    plz help me 4r api.gv some books on apiSad [:(]

  2. 09 Mar 2007 at 00:50

    The article is really valuble.It will give good exposure to Windows API

  3. 19 Sep 2005 at 13:01

    hey ther, can anyone gve me an idea how to retrive the system's information in vb so that i could create a system dedicated application. or any other method

  4. 12 Mar 2003 at 19:38

    Look in the registry:


    For WinNT/2K (I assume this works on XP too...)


    HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\Current Version\RegisteredOrganization



    You'll need to find a way to read this key as VB can't do it on it's own.  You can use API Routines Reg*.  Check msdn (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library) for more details.

  5. 28 Nov 2002 at 09:36

    Hey
    just wondering if anyone has an advice for a problem tha i'm trying to solve:


    I need to make an API call from VBA within Excel to get information about the compnany that the machine is registered to.  I was wondering if anyones knows the DLL file it's in or any other way of getting this informmation into Excel


    Really appreciate anyone's input.


    Thanks RT

  6. 13 Jul 2002 at 09:04

    this looks quite promising, at least if he keeps goin' and wud be nice if he exposes some calls... for guys who want to expand their "Database"

  7. 01 Jan 1999 at 00:00

    This thread is for discussions of API Programming Series #1.

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