Chapter 1. What makes an API irresistible?
This chapter covers
- Defining a web API and what it can do
- Ensuring a great developer experience
- Avoiding common pitfalls
An API is an interface into a computer system—an application programming interface. Historically APIs started out as highly coupled interfaces between computer systems. Web APIs, which are much freer and less tied together, have been evolving for quite some time, but recently developers have seen a huge explosion in the web APIs available to them. Many of these APIs were developed without the end user (in this case, a developer using the API) in mind, resulting in a frustrating developer experience and a less successful web API.
An irresistible API is straightforward to use, well ...
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