What does API stand for???

What does API stand for???

Hi there. As far as I know:

Application Programmers Interface.

It's a method of ineracting with the OS or windows. Utilizing the power of API's would enable you to accomplish things(Functions) that would've been imposible through your programing environment.

Application Programming Interface

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Tom Young, 14 Year Old
[email protected]
ICQ: 15743470
AIM: TomY10
PERL, JavaScript and VB Programmer

What does VB stand for?

:)

Actually, you can't do anything without the APIs.

The Visual Basic programming environment simplifies the API - instead of creating an empty window with 40+ lines of code (30 of them are APIs), you have the "Form", with which you can show an empty window without a single line of code. Also, you get many simplified API functions: Did you know that the MsgBox function simplifies the MessageBox API function? Basically any function in VB does this.

Also, if you don't use the VB programming environment, you must use subclassing - so if you get a single run-time error, your program will crash immediately (messages in queue with no message handler)...

The definitions of the functions are found in the MSVBVMxx.DLL file (xx = VB version) - that's why it's required.

Of course, it doesn't include simplified versions of all the Win32 APIs - or it would have been about 20MB... (And any person using VC++ can create more APIs) That's why Microsoft provided the Declare keyword.

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Yonatan
Teenage Programmer
E-Mail: [email protected]
ICQ: 19552879
AIM: RYoni69

So, is it possible to use your own API calls, do not use forms or things like MsgBox and avoid having to use the runtime DLLs?

It helps you appreciate Microsoft's efforts to make programming very productive. If not for tools like the Visual Studio, I don't think I would be a programmer at all. I would not really want to sit at a green terminal screen programming in COBOL for 8 hours a day or worry about stupid case sensitivity like in Java. Why should we work twice as hard (at least) to write a program that is half as user friendly? I'm very impatient, so I don't want to write tedious code over and over again when I can easily call a VB function to do that for me. Thinking of this, does Linux offer anything similar to the API? Has anyone here tried programming for Linux after you've used VB? I am interested in your opinions. Thanks

Tom

With a VB program, you're always stuck with the runtime dll's no matter how many API's you're using.
Although, an API is not something only OS-es have. Basically every program that can create dll's that you call like the API's (Declare ... lib ""... etc).
My last boss has it's own API, which allows external programmer's to extend functionality of the program.
Visual Studio isn't the only Visual Environment, Borland has Delphi (don't know) and C++ Builder, which I personally think is better then VC++.
Linux has not a real API as far as I know, but it uses libraries (packages) which you can include. At least, that's what I know about it. I heard Borland is re-writing it's development tools to make it available in Linux too, I heard that it works like 'design the windows and write the code and compile it on the OS you want to run it'... kewl :-)

So is it possible to call API functions from anywhere? Like maybe a batch file? (don't laugh you swines)