the Design Experience Weblog Archive

The most relevant part to me was "An API design which exposes the highest-level interface rather than a huge pile of lower-level calls (which could make it way too easy, for example, to call the right things in the wrong order), and whose methods/operations are named well! Half the reason our books sell so well is simply because some of the Java API designers used names that practically beg you to do the wrong thing."

I can say OpenACS APIs could use some work in this regard. I have been trying to create better high level APIs for many of the most important functions, but I think getting it right, and making it obvious the correct way to use the APIs including combining them to create software, is very important. APIs clearly need to be designed to be put together as building blocks, not in isolation. I'll have to think about this some more whenever I work on the OpenACS code.