NOTE: I have fundamental knowledge of computer graphics and modern OpenGL. In the case that I am completely lost, do you think I can still learn the computer graphics ideas presented in the books by reading the code and making sense of it, even if I don't code them myself? If this is not possible or is very hard, how hard it would be for me to convert and try these ideas on modern OpenGL while I read the books? If my computer is able to run them, there should be a way for me to write them as well. I think this should be possible because I am playing games from these eras in my computer today.

I want to code in those APIs for the sake of doing the exercises in the book, not move from those APIs. What are my options if I want to code the examples in these books? Is there a way to write DirectX 7,8 and 9 code in Windows 10? I checked the articles 'Where is the DirectX SDK?' from MSDN but they are mainly about how to move from D3D9 to new APIs. And I have couple of more old books which uses old APIs like DirectX 7 and 8. I want to be able to code the presented ideas myself and I have a Windows 10 machine. The problem is, since the book is old, it uses a very old DirectX API.

I feel like this book is full of great general computer graphics knowledge and I want this to be an exploration. I decided to study couple of old computer graphics books like Andre LaMothe's Tricks of 3D Game Programming Gurus.

Directx 9 sdk windows 10