Issues when debugging code with low-level APIs
Working with low-level APIs such as the Win32 API opens up a treasure trove of new and powerful tools. However, it comes with a couple of downsides. Debugging your code suddenly gets a lot harder, and it also becomes more critical.
There are a couple of areas you need to be aware of when you want to debug your code using low-level APIs:
- Error handling
- Interoperability
- Debugging tools
- Compatibility and portability
- Documentation and community support
Each of these can pose a challenge, requiring you to think about your debugging strategy before you start coding. Let’s go through the potential issues.
Error handling
As mentioned previously, you’re responsible for error handling when using low-level APIs. You don’t get exceptions from the functions you call when something goes wrong. You always have to be careful to check the return code of the calling code to see if it is 0. And...
