On Tue, Dec 15, 2015 at 11:04 AM, Ulli Horlacher <frams...@rus.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote: > > Ehhh... I started Python programming some weeks ago and I know nearly > nothing about Windows. I am a UNIX and VMS guy :-)
You should feel right at home, then. The Windows NT kernel was designed and implemented by a team of former DEC engineers led by David Cutler, who was one of the principle architects of VMS. There's an old joke that W[indows] NT is VMS + 1. Actually, you'd probably only notice a slight resemblance if you were coding a driver [1]. Microsoft discourages using the native NT API in user mode. Windows client DLLs such as kernel32.dll usually implement an API function in one of three ways, or in combination: using the native runtime library and loader functions (Rtl* & Ldr* in ntdll.dll) calling system services such as Nt* public APIs (ntdll.dll => ntoskrnl.exe) NtUser* & NtGdi* private APIs (user32.dll, gdi32.dll => win32k.sys) using a local procedure call (via ALPC or a driver) to a subsystem process such as csrss.exe - Windows client/server runtime conhost.exe - console host services.exe - service control manager lsass.exe - local security authority smss.exe - session manager But this is all an implementation detail. The API could be implemented in a totally different way in a totally different environment, such as running WINE on Linux. [1]: http://windowsitpro.com/windows-client/windows-nt-and-vms-rest-story -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list