# DirectX

25 Hacker News commenters recommended DirectX and 24 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Game developers praise DirectX 11 and 12 as a nice, capable API, though it is tied to Windows and critics want a better SDK and tooling.

## Why people recommend it

- Standard for game development (4 comments): "DirectX was a godsend for game developers (up until around 2020 when MS stopped caring about anything)." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49179869)) "Windows, Visual Studio and DirectX the way to go for the large majority of game studios" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46487312)) "DirectX was a really useful thing for game makers." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46890462))
- Nice, easy-to-use API (4 comments): "DirectX fragmented the market (it really is a pity they couldn't work with OpenGL). But I will concede at least the API was nice from a developer perspective." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47999053)) "I've found it has less idiosyncrasies, is slightly less tedious in general" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46016343)) "easy to learn and easy to use without worrying about performance too much" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50257316))
- Preferred over Vulkan and OpenGL (4 comments): "The directx specs are arguably better in many ways than the vulkan specs." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46131142)) "Carmack admitted that DirectX had become much better than OpenGL" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49692978)) "him has acknowledged DirectX being much better" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50192189))
- Total control over hardware (2 comments): "DirectX 11 was perfectly fine" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46297632)) "DirectX12 isn't slow by any stretch of the imagination." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47462609))

## What people warn about

- Tied to Windows (3 comments): "sadly it's stuck to a specific platform" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50255525)) "if windows stayed with OpenGL instead of inventing its own, gaming on linux would be far easier for decades" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46137019)) "DirectX makes assumptions that it's running on Windows, and uses Windows data structures in its APIs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46024639))
- Weak SDK and COM tooling (2 comments): "I really wish DX would go back to have a proper installable SDK with headers, libs, tools, integrated documentation and example code" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46133142)) "if only COM actually had better tooling, instead of pick your adventure C++ framework" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46966440))
- Verbose and unnecessarily complex (2 comments): "forces every developer to do things like allocate their own @#$! framebuffer" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48371214)) "Vulkan and DX12 are currently flawed APIs that are unnecessarily complex" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49024300))
- Dated COM-based design (2 comments): "Likewise there are DirectX COM interfaces that are really only usable from Visual C++ COM extensions" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49750938)) "It's still almost criminally weird that DirectX still prefers ancient COM to WinRT." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46595386))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Vulkan](https://hackerapproved.com/p/vulkan.md): 99 recommend
- [OpenGL](https://hackerapproved.com/p/opengl.md): 39 recommend
- [WebGPU](https://hackerapproved.com/p/webgpu.md): 35 recommend
- [Metal](https://hackerapproved.com/p/metal.md): 27 recommend
- [SDL_GPU](https://hackerapproved.com/p/sdl-gpu.md): 7 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "DirectX", https://hackerapproved.com/p/directx/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).