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How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters

How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters

Google TechTalks
12 HN recommenders · discussed 2011–2025
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About this video

Joshua Bloch's Google Tech Talk on how to design good APIs and why it matters, with concrete principles and examples. It treats every programmer as an occasional API designer.

Why it appears in the archive

HN repeatedly names it the best resource on API design, a staple answer to any 'how do I design an API' question.

AI-generated summary and labels from the source dataset; verify important details against the video. Source & credits.

From the Hacker News discussion

socratic · 2011-10 · strong rec

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: [VIDEO] What else should be in this bibliography?

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philbo · 2012-03 · strong rec

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: [VIDEO] If you're interested in the topic and haven't seen it yet, I urge you to do so ASAP.

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minzak · 2025-08 · strong rec

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. [VIDEO]

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rjhackin · 2011-04 · rec

Joshua Bloch gave a good presentation on API design, you might have seen this before. Here is the link - [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.

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d_r · 2011-08 · rec

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": [VIDEO] [1] [LINK]

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d_r · 2011-11 · rec

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") [VIDEO]

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stiff · 2013-04 · rec

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: [VIDEO] Google TechTalk on Git by Linus Torvalds: [LINK] All talks ever given by Alan Kay, for example: [LINK]

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mockindignant · 2014-10 · rec

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: [VIDEO]

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