What makes a good API?

API Specification Conference 2020

When you delve into GraphQL, oDATA, Hydra and pals, you see a lot of very clever, highly generalized, very "self-describing" API design patterns.

But sometimes we lose sight of the fact that, above all, we want people to be able to consume our APIs, to derive business value. Quickly. Effectively. With a minimum of fuss.

In this session we are going to talk about APIs from the consumer's point of view. What is "easy" to understand for the average developer? Where do common patterns create obstacles? Or bugs? How can we keep it simple?

We're going to look at some popular APIs and analyse them for ease of understanding, and look at the kind of code that's generated by popular client tooling, to see which patterns work well, and which get in the way.

At the end of the session we'll walk away with some API design patterns that are less "clever", but much simpler. And therefore more beautiful.