The trouble with C as an API format is that there's no size info. That's asking for buffer overflows.

There's an argument for full type info at an API, but that gets complicated across languages. Things that do that degenerate into CORBA. Size info, though, is meaningful at the machine level, and ought to be there.

Apple originally had Pascal APIs for the Mac, which did carry along size info. But they caved and went with C APIs.