API Design Anti-patterns: How to identify & avoid them
summary
Explains that Level 2 REST covers the 80/20 of HTTP APIs while Level 3 hypermedia is rare (PayPal, GitHub), and contrasts Postel’s robustness with Hyrum’s Law (observable behaviors become dependencies). Identifies concrete anti‑patterns: wrong verbs (POST for searches), GET with side effects, inconsistent casing, hidden conditional parameters. Demonstrates linting with vacuum/spectral and contract checks with Spectmatic (mock server + automated backward‑compatibility simulation) and cites 70% drift in public APIs.
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chapters (13)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:08REST and Richardson model
- 10:21Postel's law and Hyram's law
- 22:43Resilient APIs for failures
- 27:35Idempotency and safe methods
- 36:35API naming and linting
- 45:17Anti-patterns and fixes
- 54:42HTTP status codes
- 1:00:00Smart defaults and query params
- 1:03:15Nulls in APIs
- 1:05:28API governance
- 1:11:07Contract-driven development
- 1:22:44Q&A
