How to Design Great APIs and Why it Matters

    

A co-worker of mine sent me this presentation Joshua Bloch (Effective Java)… Joshua was a key API designer for Java at Sun and is now working at some small search engine company. It is so great to learn from your competitors and Josh really is a smart guy with clear, crisp ideas that resonate well in the .NET world.

How to Design a Good API & Why it Matters

A few takes aways for me:

1. If the names are nasty, you likely have bad design
2. Agility trumps completeness
3. When in doubt leave it out
4. Not to mention the numerous java framework examples he uses of what NOT to do. ;-)

BTW, you can of course find other great Framework design resources

MSDN Video Series on Designing .NET Class Libraries
BradA Design Guidelines Tag
Framework Design Guidelines : Conventions, Idioms, and Patterns for Reusable .NET Libraries

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 16, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 16, 2007
  Isn't Mater the tow truck in the Cars movie? :-) -dave

• Anonymous
  January 16, 2007
  Thanks Dave.. fixed...

• Anonymous
  January 31, 2007
  I just noticed Mitch posted a review of the Framework Design Guidelines . .NET Framework Design Guidelines

• Anonymous
  February 05, 2007
  Great talk recommended by Brad Abrams . http://www.infoq.com/presentations/effective-api-design Long,

• Anonymous
  February 26, 2007
  The last name is Bloch and not Block :-)

• Anonymous
  February 26, 2007
  Utz.. thanks! fixed.

• Anonymous
  March 10, 2007
  Luogo molto buon:) Buona fortuna!

• Anonymous
  March 12, 2007
  E evidente che il luogo e stato fatto dalla persona che realmente conosce il mestiere!

• Anonymous
  March 15, 2007
  luogo interessante, soddisfare interessante, buon!

• Anonymous
  March 17, 2007
  Lo trovo piuttosto impressionante. Lavoro grande fatto..)

• Anonymous
  March 18, 2007
  Stupore! ho una sensibilit molto buona circa il vostro luogo!!!!