have you ever shopped at a place that promised lower prices by cutting out the
middleman although this might make things easier in the real world by not
having to deal with a Cheesy storefront and high pressure salesman who's
desperate for a commission the middleman or lady is actually very important in
computer land you see the software that you use can be thought of as a club
sandwich like stack of different programs some of which sit between
whatever program you're inter acting with directly and the hardware itself
because without these layers programmers
and developers would have to code differently for every single Hardware
configuration on the planet which would be
impossible other layers sit between two
different pieces of other software and help them talk to each other without
needing to have tons of code in common
these software layers help standardize the coding process so that programs can
interface with lots of different stuff easily and while you might be most
familiar with a layer called a device driver which we've actually discussed
before and that translates program instructions and talks directly to your
Hardware another layer called an application programming interface or API
can be just as important but if a driver
is already there then to serve as the link between your hardware and programs
then what does the API actually do we'll think of it like this Windows macOS and
Linux all provide a graphical interface
your buttons checkboxes menus Etc that
are easy to click on without that you'd
be left tediously typing commands for everything you want to do like back in
the days when Doss ruled the world or if you're a bash fan then yesterday
similarly an API provides a simpler way
for developers to interact with other kinds of software a really good example
of this is social media plugins that you see on certain websites such as a news
article that embeds tweets or a page that For Better or For Worse lets people
leave Facebook comments under it both Twitter and Facebook have their own apis
that they make available to web developers making it easy for them to
bake Twitter and Facebook features into their own Pages without these apis these
social media Giants would have to share code directly with owners of other sites
which would be tedious difficult and possibly give away certain Trade Secrets
but if you're a PC Gamer you might be even more familiar with Graphics apis
such as DirectX openg and Vulcan which
sit between the engine of whatever game you're playing and your graphics card
driver these apis make it easier for game developers to code cool effects
that bring your favorite characters and stories to life and to have them work
regardless of whether you have an AMD or an NVIDIA GPU since the API can talk to
any mainstream graphics card and as GPU
technology advances you'll see new revisions of Graphics apis being rolled
out that can take advantage of more powerful Graphics chips you can actually
learn more about direct X12 and Vulcan
as well as how game engines work in these episodes but even if you don't
game or argue with random trolls in Facebook comments you're still taking
advantage of apis all the time if you're a Windows user Windows has its own API
uninspirational named the Windows API
commonly referred to as win32 or win64
depending on whether you're running a 32 or a 64-bit application Windows API
makes it easier for programs to do things like talk to your devices modify
your registry use screen elements like buttons and Status bars and much more
without making the developer code these things directly and also helping users
by providing a more reliable and consistent experience I mean can you
imagine if every single program on your computer had a different looking close
button in the corner so while apis might
not be the usual star of the show when you're doing whatever it is you do on
your PC or phone they make it possible for all of our disperate devices and
software to work well with each other and Ena the massive amount of quick
communication and high-end gaming that we've gotten used to I mean really
haven't you always been a little curious as to how the sausage is made but if
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tequ which we're going to have linked below so thanks for watching guys if you
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anymore I picked it up from for Better or For Worse which was like already kind
of a wellestablished comic by the time I was old enough to be reading comics