API
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API / Application Programming Interface for Not Yet Techies

There's not much to say that new about an API / Application
Programming Interface. This is the set instructions on
how applications can ask each other to do things.

For instance, if you run a program in Windows, it must
sometimes ask the operating to do things, especially
working with files, or printing.

Microsoft must allow software developers the
information on their APIs so that someone creating a
program to run on Windows can do it.

Actual API / Application Programming Interfaces change
all the time, with every software and operating
system update. And developers just have to keep up
with the APIs that they use. Obviously MS. Windows
is a big one.

But the general concept holds true for Linux and
Mac OS X as well. You as the software developer must
know how to ask the operating system to display
the results of a table you just created onto the
screen so the user can see it.

So as it's a broad -- and extremely necessary --
IT concept, API / Application Programming Interface
is important but until computer scientists come up
with some brand new model of computing, the basic
concept will remain in use, although the particulars
vary with every program and operating system and
every update to them.
- posted by RickStooker @ 1:00 PM (0) comments