I would say win32 api is actually not bad. Despite the fact that I don't know how to write C and CPP in a proper way, meaning not just submit the code to get an "AC", but an actual project, where you build something for people to actually use, either lib or executable.
Microsoft did a decent job with the documentation. The cmake side needs a bit of work. Yeah, I don't know how to properly config it. Thanks to Google, I still don't know how, but it's working.
To play with Project Panama, llama.cpp seems too big to play.
So I'm wondering if I can get something small but interesting and meaningful. I think a tape drive controller is good. Read and write data using Java on Windows would just as easy as you work with the `/dev/st0` on linux.