01/21/2021 Microsoft is opening up old Win32 APIs long used for 32-bit Windows programming, letting coders use languages of their choice instead of the default C/C++ option or individual workarounds. As its name bespeaks, Win32 is the 32-bit API for versions of Windows from 95 and later. Although Win32 APIs could previously be used in other languages besides C/C++, that required workarounds -- wrappers or bindings -- such as the familiar P/Invoke scheme for C#. However, using P/Invoke and its Rust counterpart, winapi-rs, is cumbersome because the individual offerings must be manually maintained, making it hard to keep up sustained coverage. What's more, such a scheme doesn't translate to other languages.