How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters

What Hacker News said

Strong rec socratic · 2011-10 · on “How to Rock a Systems Design Interview”

Obviously, this is marketing rather than a serious treatment of the topic. It seems to basically say: "in order to design a system, you should have a regular undergraduate Computer Science education" which seems maybe like a prerequisite (and maybe informative about their hiring process) but not very useful. However, for what it's worth, the two best resources I've seen for systems design are: Hints for Computer System Design: [LINK] How to Design a Good API: [this video] What else should be in this bibliography?

Strong rec philbo · 2012-03 · on “API Design is UI for Developers”

I'm building a public API in my current job and, a few weeks ago, I was scouting around for the good API design advice. Absolutely far and away the best resource that I found was this Google TechTalk by Joshua Bloch: [this video] If you're interested in the topic and haven't seen it yet, I urge you to do so ASAP.

Strong rec minzak · 2025-08 · on “Everything I know about good API design”

Nice article. I'd also highly recommend "How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters" video from Joshua Bloch (co-author of Java). He digs much deeper, mostly at code level rather than JSON level but the same principles apply. Even though this video is almost 20 years old, the topics are as significant today as they were back then. [this video]

Recommends rjhackin · 2011-04 · on “Ask HN: What makes a good API presentation?”

Joshua Bloch gave a good presentation on API design, you might have seen this before. Here is the link - [this video] Mostly along those lines will make a presentation useful and interesting. Not sure whats the time limit for your presentation but real life example would keep the audience more interactive or building something on the fly from ground up.

Recommends d_r · 2011-08 · on “Ask HN: API design practices”

Not specifically about web service APIs, but you might enjoy this talk by Joshua Bloch [1]: "How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters": [this video] [1] [LINK]

Recommends d_r · 2011-11 · on “Ask HN: How to design and structure a framework/api”

How about this to start? "How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters" -- a great talk by Joshua Bloch (also the author of "Effective Java") [this video]

Recommends stiff · 2013-04 · on “Ask HN: What's the best technical talk you've heard?”

Single best is difficult, here are some favourites of mine: "You and your research" by Richard Hamming: [LINK] "How to design a good API and why it matters" by Joschua Bloch: [this video] Google TechTalk on Git by Linus Torvalds: [LINK] All talks ever given by Alan Kay, for example: [LINK]

Recommends mockindignant · 2014-10 · on “Ask HN: What makes an API good?”

I highly recommend this ~hour long talk given by Josh Bloch a few years ago, it is quite good and gives plenty of concrete examples: [this video]