5 API Development Tips from Engineers at API World: Insights for 2024

As we begin to round out 2024 and think about what the future holds for APIs, we wanted to get some perspective from the folks who are leading the way from the code up, so to speak.

At the “world’s largest gathering of API developers” earlier this month, we interviewed some of those folks and watched others speak on subjects ranging from building APIs for AI to promoting DevEx in the enterprise.

What really hit home was the idea that as more and more companies attempt to maximize the benefits of API-led development, they need savvy engineers coding the way.

As a Gaganjot K. staff engineer at a large video game development company put it: “Because in our real-world, industry-level environment, requirements change with time, APIs evolve.” That leaves API developers with the constant challenge of anticipating and proactively navigating these changes.

Gaganjot continued, “Because I'm a developer, I do understand that API development is something which as soon as I know the business requirements, I want to jump onto them. But I still like to hold back and try to understand the overall design because it's not just about development, it's also about how we will manage this and, like I said, how this will evolve going forward and how we will manage things like backward compatibility and security.”

That sounds like sage advice in a world full of change. To help you maximize a new wave of API-powered businesses, here are some considerations that may help you make your mark:

1. Business Optionality is Key:

Companies that thrive in the digital age have to be nimble, and you (developers) play a key role. According to proponents of “Unbundling the Enterprise,” the APIs are a key ingredient to a “composable technology strategy” that provides “optionality” for enterprises that want to find dramatic growth curves. Things to think about to build APIs with more options:

• Keep up with the Versioning: Implement robust versioning strategies (e.g., semantic versioning) to allow for API evolution without breaking existing integrations. This involves clearly defining versioning protocols (e.g., in URL paths, headers, or media types) and maintaining backward compatibility to ensure seamless transitions for API consumers.
• More Hypermedia Control: Consider using hypermedia controls (e.g., HATEOAS) to enable clients to dynamically navigate APIs and discover available actions, reducing coupling and increasing flexibility. By embedding links, resource relationships, and metadata directly within responses, hypermedia allows APIs to act as self-descriptive interfaces, reducing the reliance on hardcoded client logic. This approach enhances the adaptability of client applications to API changes and promotes a more RESTful architecture, where server-driven state transitions guide clients through workflows efficiently.
• Try Modular Design: Adopt an Endpoint Lifecycle perspective for APIs to maintain more control and flexibility throughout the development process.

2. Clear Communication Can’t Be an Afterthought:

APIs serve more and more complex roles in business. Think of the not-small media company Netflix. Software engineering lead Raj Ummadisetty shared why documentation has become more of a focus as they move towards more abstractions: “If the documentation is not very clear, it's not easy for customers to adopt or even understand how the API behaves, what kind of use cases it supports, and how to use them.” Improve communication with the following priorities:

• Don’t Delay on Docs: Use design tools or development platforms that generate interactive and up-to-date documentation. Remember, your docs are often a consumer, integration partner, or developer’s first impression of your brand and product–make sure it’s a good one!
• Say “Yes” to API Style Guides: Establish and enforce API style guides to ensure consistency and improve readability across all your APIs. These guides should define standards for naming conventions, resource hierarchies, error handling, and payload structures, ensuring uniformity across endpoints. Incorporate automated linting and validation tools in the CI/CD pipeline to enforce adherence to the style guide during development and deployment.
• Increase Collaboration: Utilize tools and platforms that foster communication across stakeholder groups (both technical and non-technical) to facilitate information sharing and feedback loops.

3. Data is (Still) King:

As Adam Malone, director of worldwide solutions engineering for Hasuara put it, APIs represent the gateway to a company’s data, and taking that into consideration in the development process is critical. He said: “It's easy to build an API, like here's your endpoint, build an API in any number of different coding languages and do it in half a day, a day. But being able to understand how that data transits through it, how that data lives, its data lifecycle from A to B to C to D, the lineage, the traceability, these are all the things that large organizations absolutely have to as part of their API.” Consider the following:

• Increase Data Modeling: Design efficient and scalable data models to support API functionalities and future growth. This includes choosing appropriate data structures, implementing proper indexing strategies, and optimizing for both read and write operations to handle evolving traffic patterns. Considerations should include ensuring data integrity through validation rules, handling relationships with strategies like denormalization where necessary for performance, and future-proofing models to support versioning and schema evolution without disrupting API consumers.
• Prioritize Data Security: Implement robust security measures, including encryption, authentication, and authorization, to protect sensitive data. We found that in our poll of the couple thousand API World attendees, the “biggest source of frustration in developing APIs today” was by far 40% of attendees cited security concerns as their greatest frustration.
• More Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): Implement RBAC to ensure that only authorized personnel have access to sensitive API resources and functionalities.

4. The Flow State, for Business’ Sake:

There are always tradeoffs in development: speed vs. quality, governance vs. sanity. Seriously though, as Adam DuVander, Founder and CEO of EveryDeveloper put it: “API management is essential for ensuring that APIs are well-governed, secure, and scalable. API development is essential for creating APIs that are easy to use and meet the needs of developers.” But where the rubber meets the road for developers, even the big management consulting firms (i.e. McKinsey in this case) recommends that the top-performing tech companies have their developers spend 70% of their time in the inner dev loop. That means getting more meaningful work done independently. If that sounds dreamy, what can you do to help make it a reality?

• Automation Always: If you’re not using some form of automation in your development, you’re already behind. We’re at the point now where you can safely and easily leverage tools for chat-based design and AI code gen, and hosted environments for testing throughout the lifecycle to mock, debug, and deploy. (hint hint, Blackbird).
• Lean on the API Gateways: Leverage API gateways to provide developers with self-service capabilities for API discovery, access control, and usage monitoring.
• Use a Platforms-Approach: Utilize a development platform to centralize API design standards, make collaboration easy, and reduce cross-functional dependencies. This ensures consistency in API design while providing developers with tools to manage dependencies, iterate efficiently, and maintain a unified development lifecycle. A platform-centric methodology also enhances scalability and governance by integrating CI/CD pipelines, design validation, and version control into a cohesive framework.

5. Plan for AI – No Matter What:

No surprise, AI was the underlying theme of everyone’s answers on trends for the new year. Whether it’s AI for APIs or APIs for AI, these two are going to flourish hand-in-hand, resulting in a lot more APIs. Sid Maestre of APImatic shared: “I'm most excited about the opportunity of building those small applications to solve problems, finding ways to use AI to automate things that are really drudgery for humans.” When embarking on AI enhancements in API development or navigating the flood of APIs triggered by AI implementations, developers need to keep a few things top of mind:

• Data Considerations: Evaluate data requirements for AI functionalities, including storage, access patterns, and potential biases.
• Model Training and Deployment: Plan for infrastructure and processes to support model training, deployment, and ongoing monitoring.
• Ethical Considerations: Address AI's ethical implications, ensuring fairness, transparency, and accountability in API design and implementation.

Addressing these technical considerations can help you contribute to building robust, scalable, and user-friendly APIs that meet business requirements and drive innovation.

A Composable Solution

By embracing these best practices and technical considerations, you can build APIs that are not only functional but also adaptable, secure, and user-friendly. Some of the trends we’ve touched on, including AI infusion, increased collaboration, more security, and data access, are all top of mind.

To further enhance your API development process, consider exploring tools like our Blackbird API Development Platform that will not only address these trends but exceed expectations. Blackbird provides a comprehensive suite of features designed to enable a composable API solution that meets a variety of business and innovation goals.

With Blackbird, you can:

• Streamline API development: Accelerate your API development lifecycle with powerful tools for design, testing, and documentation.
• Enhance collaboration: Foster seamless collaboration among developers and stakeholders through shared workspaces and communication channels.
• Ensure API security: Protect your APIs with robust security features, including authentication, authorization, and rate limiting.
• Scale with ease: With Blackbird's cloud-native architecture and flexible deployment options, you can easily scale your APIs to meet growing demands.

Until the next tech conference, if you’re ready to take your API development to the next level in the new year, try Blackbird for free at getblackbird.io!