What (who) is news:comp os ms-windows programmer win32 - definition
![Versions before Windows 95 had to be installed from [[floppy disk]]s by end users (or in professional environments with a network installation), here Windows for Workgroups with nine 3.5-inch-disks to be inserted sequentially.](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/Microsoft Windows for Workgroups 3.11 mit 9 Setup HD-Disketten.jpg?width=200 "Versions before Windows 95 had to be installed from [[floppy disk]]s by end users (or in professional environments with a network installation), here Windows for Workgroups with nine 3.5-inch-disks to be inserted sequentially.")
![[[Windows 3.0]], released in 1990](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/Windows 3.0 workspace.png?width=200 "[[Windows 3.0]], released in 1990")
.svg?width=200 "Windows logo, 1995")
Wikipedia
The Windows API, informally WinAPI, is Microsoft's core set of application programming interfaces (APIs) available in the Microsoft Windows operating systems. The name Windows API collectively refers to several different platform implementations that are often referred to by their own names (for example, Win32 API); see the versions section. Almost all Windows programs interact with the Windows API. On the Windows NT line of operating systems, a small number (such as programs started early in the Windows startup process) use the Native API.
Developer support is available in the form of a software development kit, Microsoft Windows SDK, providing documentation and tools needed to build software based on the Windows API and associated Windows interfaces.
The Windows API (Win32) is focused mainly on the programming language C in that its exposed functions and data structures are described in that language in recent versions of its documentation. However, the API may be used by any programming language compiler or assembler able to handle the (well-defined) low-level data structures along with the prescribed calling conventions for calls and callbacks. Similarly, the internal implementation of the API's function has been developed in several languages, historically. Despite the fact that C is not an object-oriented programming language, the Windows API and Windows have both historically been described as object-oriented. There have also been many wrapper classes and extensions (from Microsoft and others) for object-oriented languages that make this object-oriented structure more explicit (Microsoft Foundation Class Library (MFC), Visual Component Library (VCL), GDI+, etc.). For instance, Windows 8 provides the Windows API and the WinRT API, which is implemented in C++ and is object-oriented by design.
