http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/2009/04/api-first-design.html

Huh? Doesn't everyone document the APIs before they start writing code that 
exports APIs?  Seriously, don't you programmers do that?

I can't imagine how you can even know when you're done a piece of the 
library if you didn't do the documentation first. I thought that was, like, 
the only way to do it.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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Darren New wrote:
> http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/2009/04/api-first-design.html
> 
> Huh? Doesn't everyone document the APIs before they start writing code
> that
> exports APIs?  Seriously, don't you programmers do that?
> 
> I can't imagine how you can even know when you're done a piece of the
> library if you didn't do the documentation first. I thought that was,
> like, the only way to do it.

I spent weeks deciding on the API, some more weeks deciding on internal
design, and I've yet to write any *real code* for this one library... :)

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Darren New wrote:
> http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/2009/04/api-first-design.html
> 
> Huh? Doesn't everyone document the APIs before they start writing code 
> that exports APIs?  Seriously, don't you programmers do that?
> 
> I can't imagine how you can even know when you're done a piece of the 
> library if you didn't do the documentation first. I thought that was, 
> like, the only way to do it.

Maybe I don't do anything enterprisy enough. I'm usually more worried 
about "Jesus, how the hell do you design an algorithm does solves X?"

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Maybe I don't do anything enterprisy enough.

I think the commentators use "API" to mean "external API to access your 
webby crap."  It used to be that "API" was how you interface to pretty much 
any chunk of library code.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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Darren New wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> Maybe I don't do anything enterprisy enough.
> 
> I think the commentators use "API" to mean "external API to access your 
> webby crap."  It used to be that "API" was how you interface to pretty 
> much any chunk of library code.

It's news to me that it's possible to access anything web-based with 
something other than a web browser.

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> It's news to me that it's possible to access anything web-based with 
> something other than a web browser.

  Why would the http protocol be limited to web browsers?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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> It's news to me that it's possible to access anything web-based with 
> something other than a web browser.

Tell Windows Live Mail to use your Hotmail account and it will talk over 
http.

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scott wrote:
>> It's news to me that it's possible to access anything web-based with 
>> something other than a web browser.
> 
> Tell Windows Live Mail to use your Hotmail account and it will talk over 
> http.

That's because they are both Micro$oft products.

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Warp wrote:
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> It's news to me that it's possible to access anything web-based with 
>> something other than a web browser.
> 
>   Why would the http protocol be limited to web browsers?

It isn't. I personally have written a small Haskell program that 
connects to PassMark website, downloads the current benchmark table, and 
gives me a CSV file containing all the current results.

Of course, writing an HTTP client is very nontrivial. If anything 
remotely unusual were to happen, my program would hopelessly fall over. 
More to the point, there's masses of tricky parsing to wade through all 
the presentational HTML to extract the actual raw data I'm after.

(The original plan was to then connect to ebuyer.com and dredge out the 
processor prices and availability - but this turned out to be far too hard.)

The fun part is, if PassMark ever change their presentational HTML (or 
their URLs), my program will spectacularly break.

I wouldn't really call this "interfacing my program to a website". I'd 
call this "a fragile hack which just happens to sort-of work right now".

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> That's because they are both Micro$oft products.

Not really, it's because there is an agreed standard for how the information 
is transferred over http (of course if both sides are made by the same 
company this is usually automatically the case).

How about RSS feeds, loads of programs written that access those over the 
web?

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