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How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters

Google TechTalks

349K subscribers • 56 videos on Hallway

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  • Recommended by 14 people: 12 on Hacker News, 1 on Lobsters and 1 curated list.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2011 to 2025.
  • Presented by Joshua Bloch, author of Effective Java

Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.

453K views19 years ago14 recommendations

Software designAPI designDesign patterns

Joshua Bloch explains the fundamental principles of designing high-quality, maintainable APIs and why they matter for software development.

Google Tech Talks January 24, 2007 ABSTRACT Every day around the world, software developers spend much of their time working with a variety of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). Some are integral to the core platform, some provide access to widely distributed frameworks, and some are written in-house for use by a few developers. Nearly all programmers occasionally function as API designers, whether they know it or not. A well-designed API can be a great asset to the organization that wrote it and to all who use it. Good APIs increase the pleasure and productivity of the developers who use them, the quality of the software they produce, and ultimately, the corporate bottom line....

Why it's here

14 people recommend this

What people say. Widely recommended as the definitive talk on API design principles and best practices.

Moments people linked to

socraticon Hacker News • Recommends

On “How to Rock a Systems Design Interview”

Obviously, this is marketing rather than a serious treatment of the topic. It seems to basically say: "in order to design a system, you should have a regular undergraduate Computer Science education" which seems maybe like a prerequisite (and maybe informative about their hiring process) but not very useful. However, for what it's worth, the two best resources I've seen for systems design are: Hints for Computer System Design: link How to Design a Good API: link to this video What else should be in this bibliography?
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philboon Hacker News • Recommends

On “API Design is UI for Developers”

I'm building a public API in my current job and, a few weeks ago, I was scouting around for the good API design advice. Absolutely far and away the best resource that I found was this Google TechTalk by Joshua Bloch: link to this video If you're interested in the topic and haven't seen it yet, I urge you to do so ASAP.
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minzakon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Everything I know about good API design”

Nice article. I'd also highly recommend "How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters" video from Joshua Bloch (co-author of Java). He digs much deeper, mostly at code level rather than JSON level but the same principles apply. Even though this video is almost 20 years old, the topics are as significant today as they were back then. link to this video
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awesome-talkscurated list on GitHubRecommends

Under “Software Design”

How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters by **Josh Bloch** (Google TechTalks 2007) 1:00:18
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dbremneron Lobsters • Recommends

How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters (2007)
5View on Lobsters

rjhackinon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: What makes a good API presentation?”

Joshua Bloch gave a good presentation on API design, you might have seen this before. Here is the link - link to this video Mostly along those lines will make a presentation useful and interesting. Not sure whats the time limit for your presentation but real life example would keep the audience more interactive or building something on the fly from ground up.
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d_ron Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: API design practices”

Not specifically about web service APIs, but you might enjoy this talk by Joshua Bloch 1: "How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters": link to this video 1 link
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d_ron Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: How to design and structure a framework/api”

How about this to start? "How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters" -- a great talk by Joshua Bloch (also the author of "Effective Java") link to this video
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stiffon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: What's the best technical talk you've heard?”

Single best is difficult, here are some favourites of mine: "You and your research" by Richard Hamming: link "How to design a good API and why it matters" by Joschua Bloch: link to this video Google TechTalk on Git by Linus Torvalds: link All talks ever given by Alan Kay, for example: link
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mockindignanton Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: What makes an API good?”

I highly recommend this ~hour long talk given by Josh Bloch a few years ago, it is quite good and gives plenty of concrete examples: link to this video
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paulkoeron Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: What makes an API good?”

I highly recommend the following talk by Joshua Bloch: "How to design a good API and why it mattes" 1. Key points: - When in doubt, leave it out - you can never remove things from an API but always add to it. - Write several clients of the API to get a good feel how its used. Three is usually enough, one is not. 1 link to this video
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neveson Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: What are good reads for designing APIs?”

Don't miss Joshua Bloch (from "Effective Java" fame) great presentation: How to design a good API and why it matters link to this video and the accompanying slides: link
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0xmohiton Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: What's your favorite tech talk?”

How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters 0 The Principles of Clean Architecture 1 The State of the Art in Microservices by Adrian Cockcroft 2 "The Mess We're In" by Joe Armstrong 3 0 link to this video 1 link 2 link 3 link
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watwuton Hacker News • Recommends

On “Good learning material – JAVA, Spring”

a.) On java - one hour talk but good: * How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters link to this video b.) General code structure - dont to read it cover to cover unless you like to, you will die of boredom, but definitely have a look in library. It will help you to think about code structure right way. * Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code * Code Complete c.) Object Oriented Programming * Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented The three books I recommended are older, but not much changed in basics of object oriented programming. They are well readable. I would also recommend to read something on functional programming, mostly so that you see another approach too and thus…
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DanPristupovon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: What are some of the best technical talks you've heard?”

Here are some of my favorites: How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters link to this video Agile Methods The Good, the Hype and the Ugly link
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codersofthedarkon Stack Overflow • Mentions

On “How to create web API service in PHP”

Basically, What is an API? If you understand how data goes from a HTML form to php code, then trust me you know all about API's. Here rather than talking forms, we talk about urls that are created at the end by those forms. What are the Types of API? There are two types of heavily used APIs for web services: SOAP and REST. Google is one of the major players with a SOAP based API while Yahoo (and most of their recent acquisitions) have taken the REST approach. More often than not, a “Web 2.0” service you come across today will probably be using REST. How to create a REST API in PHP with Authentication Key to delete a value from database? Let’s say we have a PHP class (manage.php)…
53View the answer