System Calls - Microsoft Windows API

From time to time FTT runs Posix API C programming courses (with C++ additions where customers require this) for developers working on embedded Linux applications and systems. For instance, in 2018 we ran four such courses for various defence and automotive sector companies. Comparatively speaking, however, there seems to have been hardly any demand for the corresponding Win API courses over the last decade or so.

Working on writing workbooks for the new BCS Digital IT Apprenticeship standards and also for workbooks for those studying for the BCS HEQ qualifications I decided to do some research on updateing the FTT Win32 API C programming course, as the syllabi for the various courses/modules expect some knowledge of system code and system calls. With the advent of 64 bit machines the Win32 API is now referred to, generically, as the Win API. The hoped for result will be a series of workbooks dealing with Posix and Windows C programming involving system calls, both basic and more advanced. Both the Posix API and Win API workbooks provide comprehensive illustrative working examples, implemented in C, and accompanying exercises covering inter-process communication, multi-tasking, multi-threading and low level device and file IO.

Personally I think that most programmers should, at least at some point in their studies or careers, have written at least moderately advanced C based applications, including applications involving system calls, multi-tasking and inter-process communication. There are, probably, those that might disagree with this view, but, hopefully, there are also many who will agree with me. Writing code that mixes C and assembler might also be a good thing to "have experienced" as well as mastering some of the "dark arts" involved in writing linker scripts and handling "relocatable code".