What is an API? (Application Programming Interface)

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 that 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 interacting 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 Mac OS 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 than 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 let people leave Facebook comments under it both Twitter and Facebook have their own ap is that they make available to web developers making it easy for them to bake Twitter and Facebook features into their own pages without these ap is 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 api's such as DirectX OpenGL and Vulcan which sit between the engine of whatever game you're playing and your graphics card driver these api's make it easier for game developers to code cool effects that bring your favorite characters and stories to life and 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 API is being rolled out that can take advantage of more powerful graphics chips you can actually learn more about DirectX 12 and vulcan as well as how game engines work in these episodes but even if you don't game or argue with random trolls and facebook comments you're still taking advantage of api's all the time if you're a Windows user Windows has its own API unand the windows api commonly referred to as win 32 or win 64 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 device's 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 api's 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 disparate devices and software to work well with each other and enable the massive amounts 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 when it comes to payments for your website or your mobile app you do not care how the sausage is made then you might want to check out Braintree Braintree makes mobile payments so fast easy and seamless it's almost magical add it to your app with just a few lines of code and you are instantly ready to accept Apple pay Android pay PayPal Venlo credit cards even Bitcoin and if some other way comes along Braintree will support that too they are fast payouts and continuous support means you'll always be ready whether you're earning your first dollar or your billionth you can see fewer abandoned carts and more sales with brain trees best-in-class mobile checkout experience and you can learn more at Braintree payments comm slash tech quickie which we're going to have linked below so thanks for watching guys you liked the video like it if you dislike it just like if you want to check out our channels boom if you want to leave a comment with video suggestions boom if you want to subscribe and follow then cool beans does anyone say cool beans anymore I picked it up from for better or for worse which was like already kind of a well-established comic by the time I was old enough to be reading comics

Channel: Techquickie

Views: 581,006

Rating: 4.9233432 out of 5

Keywords: api, graphics, rendering, direct3d, directx, vulkan, mantle, amd, nvidia, microsoft, windows api, win32, win64, software stack, application programming interface

Id: 6STSHbdXQWI

Length: 5min 45sec (345 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 04 2016