Posted by F Sun, 31 Aug 2008 22:14:00 GMT
I wrote about API design guidelines before, collecting links, resources, papers and hoping someone would write a book on the subject.
The wait is over! Jaroslav Toulash published a book on Practical API Design!
Take a look at the book’s accompanying website for more details.
I’m waiting for my copy.
Posted by F Mon, 20 Nov 2006 03:31:00 GMT
Update: Good news! Jaroslav Toulash emailed me that he published a book on Practical API Design !!!
Looks like Brian McAllister may be preparing a talk on Designing Elegant APIs.
I've been very interested in good API design for a long time. But I could never find a single book on the subject. Many design and programming books provide good advice and guidelines that are essential for designing good APIs, but none of them tackles the matter directly.
I reviewed "Interface Oriented Programming" a few months back with disappointment. It may not be a bad book, but I felt it was quite basic and superficial. May be my expectations were too high, and too focused on API design.
Over time, I collected some links on the subject and shared some with Brian:
Best Practices in Javascript Library Design (via John Resig on JavaScript API Design) - A good presentation given by the author of JQuery.
API: Design Matters - Article by Michi Henning, ZeroC, for ACM Queue magazine.
How to Design a Good API and Why it Matters - Excellent deck from Joshua Bloch. There's also a video of his presentation at JavaPolis 2005.
Interface Design, Best Practices in Object-Oriented API Design in Java, by Bill Venners - This one is a Book in progress!. Unfortunately, the last updates seem to be from 2002 or so. I'm not sure if the project is still alive. Anyway, it contains many good articles.
How To Design a (module) API - A great page on good design practices for writing APIs. It's tailored for NetBeans module writers, but is still pretty general and gives very valuable guidelines.
How to Write APIs That Will Stand the Test of Time - A session I attended at JavaOne 2006. Presented by Tim Boudreau and Jaroslav Tulach, members of the NetBeans team. It focuses on API evolution and compatibility, but also covers usability and other guidelines. I guess they are the main guys behind NetBeans' How To Design a (module) API page linked above.
I had the chance to speak with Jaroslav after his session and suggested he should write a book on this topic. I emailed him the references I had, and he said he would try to draft something by the end of year.
API Usability - Focused on making APIs easy to use. The article applies general usability principles (commonly used in GUI design) to the design of APIs.
Measuring API Usability - An interesting article by a usability engineer at Microsoft, published on Dr. Dobb's. It favors the use of scenario-based design to achieve usable APIs, and explains the use of their "cognitive dimensions" framework for measuring API usability. He also blogs about API usability.
Krzysztof's Laws of API Design - From another Microsoft blogger on API design.
Java API Design Guidelines - A good article from a developer who was also surprised by the lack of a book about API design. He collected some advice and additional links.
XOM Design Principles - Some design "principles" followed by XOM (an XML parsing library).
The Most Important Design Guideline? - A short article by C++ guru Scott Meyers.
Humane Interface, Minimal Interface, Designed Inheritance, DSL Boundary, Duck Interface, Fluent Interface, Public vs. Published Interfaces - Some of the many great writings from Martin Fowler. These selection is on specific topics that are relevant to API design. Most of them are quite recent.
Programmers are People, Too - An article by Ken Arnold for ACM Queue magazine: "Programming language and API designers can learn a lot from the field of human-factors design."
So, let's hope Brian gives his talk at a big conference, signs a contract with a big publisher and fills the void.
Posted by F Sun, 18 Dec 2005 17:02:00 GMT
If you work as a software developer for a living, I recommend you get a copy of “My Job Went to India”
I read it right after “The World is Flat”
Full of great advice. Stimulating and motivating little book. It helped me find the energy to go back to work after taking a week off :-).
The book is divided in 52 concrete pieces of advice. You’ll get ideas for improving your technical abilities, as well as business-related knowledge and inter-personal skills.
A couple of paragraphs I liked, from the Introduction:
For some not-insignificant percentage of IT workers, the safest bet is to start looking for an alternate line of work. […] If you don’t have passion and a drive that would force you to create software […] you’re not going to be able to continue to compete with those who do.
… Software is a business […] To stay employed, you’re going to have to understand how you fit into the business’s plan to make money.
And this one below made me laugh, from advice #6 “Be a specialist”:
“Too many of us seem to believe that specializing in something simply means not knowing about other things.”
I would have titled it something like “The Mature Pragmatic Programmer”, as it is a perfect second volume for “The Pragmatic Programmer”
Posted by F Sun, 16 Oct 2005 01:51:00 GMT
Months ago, I was looking for a book on Design Patterns. I already own
the great classic GoF
I came across Holub
On Patterns
I found a long list of errors. Some of them are minor, but still may confuse readers, specially those new to the topic.
Read more...