On 10/26/15, Zachary Turner <ztur...@google.com> wrote:
>
> It's not that "many programmers still refer to Windows API as Win32", it's
> that the Windows API itself has decided that that is what it is called.
> When you #define _WIN32 in a C or C++ program using the Windows API, it
> does not mean "this is a 32-bit app", it means "I'm using the Windows
> API". That's why you still define this even in 64-bit builds, for example,
> where you #define both _WIN32 and _WIN64.
To some extent the _WIN32 macro is a deeper explanation, as in going
deeper into the API header files, but it's also a symptom of the same
short-sighted naming scheme that plagues the name of the system
directory and DLL names. The Portable Systems Group (NT's original
development team) should have put more planning into this, but ISTM
updating 16-bit Windows to Win32 was a rush job at the middle stages
of NT development. It was originally supposed to be "NT OS/2" instead
of "Windows NT", and they had to switch direction halfway through
development.
To clarify, Win32 really is not the name of the API. Microsoft changed
the name to "Windows API" [1]:
Note that [the Windows API] was formerly called the Win32 API. The
name Windows API more accurately reflects its roots in 16-bit Windows
and its support on 64-bit Windows.
In Microsoft's technical literature sometimes Win32 is used to refer
exclusively to 32-bit Windows, and sometimes it's referring to the API
in general.
[1]: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff818516
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