From futons to functions: the principles of good API design
summary
Connects Dieter Rams' ten principles to concrete API choices and claims five actionable priorities: iterate, make APIs learnable, contain complexity, be honest about abstractions, and design minimally. Cites Rust as an innovation-that-works by making advanced features usable, Wagtail as an API-first CMS that succeeds, Lifx as a documented device API enabling a cottage ecosystem, React's error-code pages as a practical diagnostics pattern, and ORMs which function but hide the N+1 problem that developers must explicitly manage.
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chapters (11)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:06What is design
- 3:05Innovation
- 8:25Learnability
- 10:35Aesthetics
- 13:36Complexity
- 15:56Abstractions
- 16:25Orbs
- 18:41Solution
- 23:22Environment
- 23:44Cognitive overhead
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