ABSTRACT

In lieu of a traditional , I’ve tried to distill the essence of the talk into a collection of maxims:

• All programmers are API designers. Good programs are modular, and intermodular boundaries define APIs. Good modules get reused.
• APIs can be among your greatest assets or liabilities. Good APIs create long-term customers; bad ones create long-term support nightmares.
• Public APIs, like diamonds, are forever. You have one chance to get it right so give it your best.
• APIs should be easy to use and hard to misuse. It should be easy to do simple things; possible to do complex things; and impossible, or at least difficult, to do wrong things.
• APIs should be self-documenting: It should rarely require documentation to read code written to a good API. In fact, it should rarely require documentation to write it…

Read in full here:

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1176617.1176622

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