API Design Interview Feedback

Ivanka Majic conducted several interviews with developers about what makes a good API. The three basic categories that she came up with as a result are that an API should be designed well, should have good documentation, and good support.

Under the topic of great API design, Ivanka provides various quotes from her interviews that support the qualities of consistency, predictability, and learnability, as well as noting that a good API is easily extended and gets better over time.

In terms of API documentation, she states that there should be an overview to explain what the API does, that documentation should be concise and logical, use navigation to expose content, and offer tutorials to help developers starting from scratch.

• http://design.canonical.com/2010/12/so-you-want-to-provide-an-api-for-the-world-to-use/