API Design Matters

Michi Henning wrote an article in ACM Queue called “API Design Matters” in which he suggests that changing APIs should be a criminal offense and that authors of poor APIs should be held accountable for their crimes. He notes that good APIs are hard to design and he presents some examples network and synchronization APIs that could be improved. He also calls for APIs to be documented before they are implemented.

• http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1255422

Some comments on this article can be found here.