Why should I use SendInput over mouse and keybd events?

Question

When looking up how to use keybd_event on Microsoft Learn, it says:

Note This function has been superseded. Use SendInput instead.

But when looking at how to use SendInput, it looks a lot more complex for not much, if any, gain, even though it can handle mouse and keyboard similarly.

For instance: Pressing Ctrl down with minimal effort:

keybd_event:

windll.user32.keybd_event(0x11, 0, 0, 0)

sendInput takes 6 more lines while also calling a very similar-looking function, KEYBDINPUT:

lib = WinDLL('user32')
lib.SendInput.argtypes = w.UINT,POINTER(INPUT),c_int
lib.SendInput.restype = w.UINT

i = INPUT()
i.type = INPUT_KEYBOARD
i.ki = KEYBDINPUT(0,0x11,0,0,0)
lib.SendInput(1,byref(i),sizeof(INPUT))

Answer 1

As a comment on SendInput vs. keybd_event says, emphasis mine:

This big problem with keybd_event is that your events may get spliced with real ones. So SendInput is the job. No idea why you are having problems. Yet.
–
David Heffernan
Sep 6, 2013 at 16:50