4 Balancing flexibility and complexity
This chapter covers
- Flexibility and extensibility versus cost of maintenance and complexity of APIs
- Providing maximum extensibility with the listener and hooks APIs
- Tackling complexity and guarding against unpredictable usage
When designing our systems and APIs, we want to find a balance between a set of features that it supports and the maintenance cost that arises from those features’ complexity. In an ideal world, every API change, such as adding a new feature, would be backed by empirical studies. For example, we can analyze the traffic on our website and, according to a need, add a new feature. We can also conduct A/B (http://mng.bz/ragJ) testing to decide which feature should be retained and which ...
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