API design

How to Design a Good API & Why it matters - Joshua Bloch

APIs can be among a company's greatest assets.

Can also be among company's greatest liabilites.

Public APIs are forever- one chance to get it right.

If you program, you are an API designer.

Useful modules tent to get reused.

Thinking in terms of APIs impoves code quality.

Characteristics of a Good API

요구사항보다 보다 일반적인 것

심지어 가장 뛰어난 디자이너도 실수를 한다.

functionality shoud be easy to explain

If it's hard to name, that's generally a bad sign.

Good names drive development

Amendable

API shoud be as small as possible but no smaller

You can always add, but you can never remove

Implmentations should not impact API

Minimize accessibility of everty

Make classes and members as private as possible

public classes shoud have no public fields (with the exception of constants)

avoid cryptic abbreviation

API must coexist peacefully with platform.

Minimize mutabillity

bad: Date, Calendar

Simple, thread-safe,

is-a relation

Stack extends Vector

Properties extends HashTable

Don't make the client do anything the module could do

Class

Method

Fail fast-report errors as soon as possible after they occur.

Compile time is best. static typing, generics.