What Do Developers Need To Know About APIs and Integration?

To gather insights on the state of integration, API design, and API management, we spoke with 19 executives who are familiar with integration and APIs and asked them, “What skills do developers need to ensure their code and applications integrate well?”
Here’s what they told us:

Documentation
Read the documentation and use the API as intended. Have “lego-ability.” Understand how the little blocks work and then build APIs that enable someone to use their imagination to create something you haven’t imagined. Expand beyond the traditional view of the customer. Identify the pain you’re in the unique position to solve. Learn to recognize where there’s emotional relevance. Anticipate what will generate great emotional resonance.

1) Developers need to design and build APIs with documentation. It’s important to figure out how to use APIs and how to build them without bugs.

2) Design to expose business functionality through APIs.

1) Come up with simple, clear and comprehensive data models to represent the problem being solved by the application.

2) Expertise in building representations of the data and operations performed on it in multiple different formats.

3) Abstract thinking to expose capability of their application to be consumed as multiple API calls.

4) Equally, wear the consumer hat and design API that consumers want and are useful for them.

5) Awareness of the standards: build solid expertise on the standards and provide a robust and secure implementation of the API.

6) Have the empathy to spend an equal amount of effort in documenting the API to ensure widespread adoption.
Proficiency in multiple languages. Often APIs come with SDK and examples of use in lieu of documentation. Be ready to dive into a language you don’t use every day to understand how this API works. And of course, writing functional tests is the fastest way to know when something goes wrong in your application.

When providing an API, developers need to step back and consider how different users may want to use their service, making sure that they expose all the features that will meet those needs. Use open standards, such as HTTP, wherever possible – to minimize what developers need to learn. To make people more successful with your APIs, provide great documentation, with easy to follow tutorials for common tasks.

API Design
Learn API design. Follow frameworks. Understand use cases and treat endpoints that address those needs. API scaling. OAUGH more seamless for authenticating versus service. Understand web hooks and exposing them for real-time integration. Properly documenting APIs.
Be aware of, and knowledgeable about, the shift to microservices with APIs and the DevOps methodology. Compute logic, move at pace, prepare for mid-course corrections. Be flexible. Always be learning. Help innovate. Understand the business, not just the technology. Developers are empowered now. They can lead the organization but they must have a more holistic view.

Developers need to well-versed with HTTP and the principles of REST. Working knowledge of at least one web framework in the language of their choice is important. Knowledge of web-based technologies like HTML and JavaScript is also important where an API allows developers to add UI elements.

Think about integration in a sustainable fashion. Think about building APIs that will be around for 10 years versus two years. Think about building long-lasting API code.