Book Review: API by Design

API by Design. This book is focused on REST APIs and introduces ways to measure complexity and some techniques to tame complexity. If you’ve ever worked on a REST API adversely impacted your WTFs/minute, this is a good book to consider.

What I liked: introducing new ways to communicate complexity, like Reference Entanglement (APIs with excessive references or arbitrary counts of nested resources). I also liked the section that quantified complexity based on optional parameters.

What I didn’t like: I wanted more examples! The book set the table for taming complexity in greenfield designs: I would have enjoyed more examples.

(Note: I know the author, Stephen Mizell, and my review is based on early access content.)