Designing Accessible APIs

This talk explores principles for designing APIs that are powerful, approachable for novice developers, and built to last. It covers API conventions, testing, dependency choices, flexibility, and empathy for API users.

Syllabus

Introduction
Accessibility
Being Kind
Writing APIs as though they will last forever
What is the minimum amount of work to do
Duplication
Unit Tests
Frameworks
OneClick Install
Platform conventions
Common types
Default case
Flexibility
Framework Authors
Strong Opinions
Expressing the API
Avoiding transitive dependencies
Using new features
Do not crash
Empathy