Resumen
There seems to be something elusive about application programming interface (API ) design that, despite years of progress, programmers have yet to master. For every way to design an API correctly, there are usually dozens of ways to design it incorrectly. Even minor and quite innocent design flaws have a tendency to get magnified out of all proportion because APIs are provided once, but are called many times. Poor APIs are difficult to program with and often require additional code to be written. Moreover, poor design can lead to inherently inefficient code by forcing unnecessary data copies. There are a few guidelines to use when designing an API. Here are a few of the author's favorite things to think about when creating an API: 1. An API must provide sufficient functionality for the caller to achieve its task. 2. An API should be minimal, without imposing undue inconvenience on the caller. 3. APIs cannot be designed without an understanding of their context.