WinAPI, or OpenGL?: )
// Kavity
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WinAPI, or OpenGL?: )
// Kavity
Ahh.. neither! .. no ... both!
But seriously - it really depends on your programming background and your current skill level.
It may be worth knowing WinAPI first if you want to make windows based graphics aps. But that is not 100% necasary as their are a couple of good libraries that can provide a level of abstraction that hides the Windows nastiness.
I would say OpenGL. I bought a 'OpenGL Superbible' last week, although I haven't started reading yet. OpenGL is more mathematically involved then the WinAPI, and the syntax is almost the same. (You'll be working with the WinAPI within OpenGL aswell)
Thanks... I've started learningboth.. but...
My background.. .well, I've beenlearning Console (dos) programming for the past 2 years. I got alot of it down... but you can't get everything. I've made alot of programs to test my skill too. And I felt ready to start learning WinAPI or OpenGL. I mainly wanna get into the game progamming industry(I know it would be hard) or atleast make my own games for fun. :)
// Kavity
WinAPI is infinitly larger and more obfuscated...
OpenGL makes sense...at least.
but you may want to have the basics of WinAPI down before you move into OpenGL if you don't plan on using a 3rd party windowing library.
I don't see why everyone likes learning a big and bloated API just so they can tie their code to a single platform, for an otherwise perfectly portable library. Does writing that however many (much greater than 100) lines just to initailize a window really give you that much more power than a library specifically designed for doing such portably, like GLUT or SDL?
If he/she wants to get into games programming then it may be wise to learn a big bloated API. Depends of course on the types of games being created - but PC games do count for a large portion of the market still.
One can have high performance OpenGL code without WinAPI.
http://www6.tomshardware.com/howto/0...indows_v_linux
Hi,
I've started programming 4 monthe ago, I'm learning API now... it's not as easy as DOS but it's more useful "I think".
i was wondering whats the environment used for programming winAPI or OpenGL....... and if we use some of api in visual basic for example.............programming WinAPI means to write such libraries.????????? (execuse me for my ignorance :()
When most speak of winAPI, they refer to programming with the winAPI functions, structs, ect....
I've been programming in C++ for 3 months or so and I just started learning OpenGL and I think it's pretty freakin' easy(So far :) )