Software Engineering Tidbits

Share this post

Accurate by design

www.softwareengineeringtidbits.com

Discover more from Software Engineering Tidbits

Small (or sometimes big) tidbits about software engineering. This is where I share tips and learnings I acquired building, maintaining and supporting software in production at Airbnb, Uber and Microsoft.
Over 6,000 subscribers
Continue reading
Sign in

Accurate by design

Georges El Khoury
Mar 22, 2022
8
Share this post

Accurate by design

www.softwareengineeringtidbits.com
1
Share

An API should state what it will do and do what it has said.

You should not have to read the code behind the API to call it. There should not be a “tribal knowledge” on the behavior of the API.

It should not have unintended consequences not described in the API.

One litmus test to do is to ask if none of the engineers are in the team anymore whether they would be any context lost not conveyed by the API.


Mastering Software Engineering Course on Maven

If you liked this article, I will be teaching a “Mastering Software Engineering” course on Maven where I will teach hard-learned lessons I acquired developing large-scale products at companies such as Uber, Airbnb, and Microsoft.

View Course


Thanks for reading Software Engineering Tidbits! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

8
Share this post

Accurate by design

www.softwareengineeringtidbits.com
1
Share
1 Comment
Share this discussion

Accurate by design

www.softwareengineeringtidbits.com
Douglas Muth
Apr 2

I've fallen in love with FastAPI recently, and one of the reasons I enjoy using it is because it automatically generates Swagger documentation from the function declarations. There's no need to mess with additional configuration or documentation--the functions themselves are the source of truth.

Expand full comment
Reply
Share
Top
New
Community

No posts

Ready for more?

© 2023 Georges El Khoury
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start WritingGet the app
Substack is the home for great writing