DirectX
Ranked 5 of 7 graphics APIs by recommenders
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.
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.
49 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 25
- criticize it
- 24
- approval share
- 51%
Recommended in 12 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 25 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1 recommender for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 12 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Standard for game development
“DirectX was a godsend for game developers (up until around 2020 when MS stopped caring about anything).”
Comment from 5 Aug 2026 in “Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc” “Windows, Visual Studio and DirectX the way to go for the large majority of game studios”
Comment from 4 Jan 2026 in “Microsoft kills official way to activate Windows 11/10 without internet” “DirectX was a really useful thing for game makers.”
Comment from 4 Feb 2026 in “The Great Unwind” - Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “Microsoft lowers AI software growth targets”
Nice, easy-to-use API
“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.”
Comment from 3 May 2026 in “Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March” “I've found it has less idiosyncrasies, is slightly less tedious in general”
Comment from 22 Nov 2025 in “How I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it (2024)” “easy to learn and easy to use without worrying about performance too much”
Comment from 27 Oct 2026 in “I still teach OpenGL ES 3.0” - Comment from 22 Nov 2025 in “How I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it (2024)”
Preferred over Vulkan and OpenGL
“The directx specs are arguably better in many ways than the vulkan specs.”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “All Sources of DirectX 12 Documentation” “Carmack admitted that DirectX had become much better than OpenGL”
Comment from 14 Sep 2026 in “CUDA for AMD on Windows” “him has acknowledged DirectX being much better”
Comment from 22 Oct 2026 in “Why Windows 11 still ships with Windows 95's memory manager hidden inside it” - Comment from 22 Nov 2025 in “How I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it (2024)”
Total control over hardware
“DirectX 11 was perfectly fine”
Comment from 17 Dec 2025 in “No Graphics API” “DirectX12 isn't slow by any stretch of the imagination.”
Comment from 21 Mar 2026 in “Our Commitment to Windows Quality”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Tied to Windows
“sadly it's stuck to a specific platform”
Comment from 27 Oct 2026 in “I still teach OpenGL ES 3.0” “if windows stayed with OpenGL instead of inventing its own, gaming on linux would be far easier for decades”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “Microsoft lowers AI software growth targets” “DirectX makes assumptions that it's running on Windows, and uses Windows data structures in its APIs”
Comment from 23 Nov 2025 in “Shaders: How to draw high fidelity graphics with just x and y coordinates” Weak SDK and COM tooling
“I really wish DX would go back to have a proper installable SDK with headers, libs, tools, integrated documentation and example code”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “All Sources of DirectX 12 Documentation” “if only COM actually had better tooling, instead of pick your adventure C++ framework”
Comment from 10 Feb 2026 in “Simplifying Vulkan One Subsystem at a Time” Verbose and unnecessarily complex
“forces every developer to do things like allocate their own @#$! framebuffer”
Comment from 2 Jun 2026 in “What's gonna happen to software engineers?” “Vulkan and DX12 are currently flawed APIs that are unnecessarily complex”
Comment from 23 Jul 2026 in “Learn OpenGL, extensive tutorial resource for learning Modern OpenGL” Dated COM-based design
“Likewise there are DirectX COM interfaces that are really only usable from Visual C++ COM extensions”
Comment from 18 Sep 2026 in “Nvidia announces native GPU programming in Rust” “It's still almost criminally weird that DirectX still prefers ancient COM to WinRT.”
Comment from 12 Jan 2026 in “Windows 8 Desktop Environment for Linux”
Other graphics APIs people recommend
The four most recommended other graphics APIs, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 7 graphics APIs, rankedWhat people said
40 of the 67 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“adapt it to DX12 on Windows”
“easy to learn and easy to use without worrying about performance too much”
“dx11 isn't bad but it has a looot of cruft around it”
“sadly it's stuck to a specific platform”
“him has acknowledged DirectX being much better”
“Likewise there are DirectX COM interfaces that are really only usable from Visual C++ COM extensions”
“Carmack admitted that DirectX had become much better than OpenGL”
“Just target x86_64 Windows with DirectX11 or DirectX12 and you will even get Linux support”
“DirectX was a godsend for game developers (up until around 2020 when MS stopped caring about anything).”
“All of the following products and services are fantastic in 2026”
“Vulkan and DX12 are currently flawed APIs that are unnecessarily complex”
“DX12 and Vulkan are quite competitive on features and behaviors.”
“forces every developer to do things like allocate their own @#$! framebuffer”
“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.”
“NT4, MSDN, DirectX. they weren't perfect, but the UX was amazing.”
“as great as CUDA, Metal and DirectX are to play around with”
“DirectX12 isn't slow by any stretch of the imagination.”
“I rather play with Vulkan, CUDA and DirectX”
“having a myriad of GPU frameworks like Vulkan/Metal/DirectX”
“D3D12 is more boilerplate-heavy, but still not as bad as Vulkan.”
“it really demonstrates what a massive failure the modern 3D APIs are for real-world usage”
“if only COM actually had better tooling, instead of pick your adventure C++ framework”
“DirectX was a really useful thing for game makers.”
“DirectX 12, WPF, ClearType ... are all has some good engineering and widespread adoption”
“It's still almost criminally weird that DirectX still prefers ancient COM to WinRT.”
“Windows, Visual Studio and DirectX the way to go for the large majority of game studios”
“Vulkan and D3D12 are great”
“DirectX does an average job at supporting it.”
“DirectX 12 is great if you really want total control over the hardware”
“DirectX 11 was perfectly fine”
“Microsoft has been absolute dogshit at releasing newer program APIs for developer to use.”
“if windows stayed with OpenGL instead of inventing its own, gaming on linux would be far easier for decades”
“DirectX saved Linux gaming”
“I really wish DX would go back to have a proper installable SDK with headers, libs, tools, integrated documentation and example code”
“The directx specs are arguably better in many ways than the vulkan specs.”
“DirectX makes assumptions that it's running on Windows, and uses Windows data structures in its APIs”
“I've found it has less idiosyncrasies, is slightly less tedious in general”
“especially maintaining all of them at the same time”
“DX12 is IMO a nicer and better API than Vulkan”
“If performance isn't a problem, using anything else--OpenGL, DirectX 11, game engines, etc.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.