In one of his regular ACM Queue articles, George Neville-Neil (a.k.a. Kode Vicious) responded to a question about API design for a database service. In this article, he points out some poor ways of implementing such an API, resulting in a “fat” API that can be difficult to use and promotes poor coding practices like copying/pasting code. He then goes on to suggest improvements to the design and provides some examples of file I/O APIs that he feels are well designed. Finally, he notes that API design is an iterative process that improves over time as you receive feedback from developers who actually use your interface.
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