Formed in 2009, the Archive Team (not to be confused with the archive.org Archive-It Team) is a rogue archivist collective dedicated to saving copies of rapidly dying or deleted websites for the sake of history and digital heritage. The group is 100% composed of volunteers and interested parties, and has expanded into a large amount of related projects for saving online and digital history.
In bartending, the mixer’s manual is a trusted source of information. These books can contain hundreds of recipes for classic cocktails, some of which might be 100 years old, while others might be for drinks that only recently arrived on the scene. Mixer’s manuals also can be great sources of inspiration for new, yet-to-be-tested recipes for exciting additions to a bar’s or restaurant’s offerings. This balancing act of preserving the old while encouraging exploration into the new can provide a valuable lesson for API development in the software world. An API’s “single source of truth” is, in many ways, the software organization’s own mixer’s manual. This is especially true when the right approach is taken to ensure that software remains functional and performant and serves up experiences that delight customers and keep them coming back for more.
The Rise of APIs and Mixology
While we might think of mixology and the mixologists who practice this craft as relatively new terms, the first recorded use of the word “mixologist” dates back to 1852 and “mixology” followed shortly after.
Just how similar are the work, mindsets and passions of mixologists and API developers and designers? Check out this definition of a mixologist and count the similarities for yourself:
“The term ‘mixologist’ refers to someone who studies the history of mixed drinks, has a rich appreciation of the ingredients and techniques used and regularly creates new and innovative mixed drinks … their job title implies that they do a significant portion of their job behind the scenes, creating new craft cocktails and putting their signature twist on existing favorites.”
The best API developers, designers and architects of the world should recognize a lot of the above in their own work. They have deep respect for their craft and are always honing it further. They seek to understand the tastes and palates of their consumers. They factor in other stakeholders’ inputs, they test, iterate and test their creations again before “serving” those APIs to production.
Like mixologists and bartenders (if you see them as two different roles), every professional along the API life cycle should understand the needs of consumers, customers and the business–and then design and develop their APIs accordingly. An essential part of this process is continuous validation and adaptation to market requirements.
Maintaining Confidence in Ever-Changing Recipes
Changes to APIs, even minor ones, can have significant downstream effects. And the same can be said for tweaks made to an age-old cocktail recipe, where adding or removing a single dash of this or that can completely change the flavor of a drink … as well as people’s interest in it.
While there’s no “standard” rate of change to APIs to plan for, you can expect changes to be needed with each new software release. This could mean changes are being made (and need to be tested against and validated) every few weeks, every month or even every day, depending on your release cadence. There also can be as-needed, ad-hoc changes.
What’s crucial for teams to ensure is that these changes do not disrupt an API’s functionality or performance. To make this possible, teams are increasingly leveraging API contract testing to provide a safety net of sorts. This comes in the form of testing that validates changes against a “contract” that details an API’s original, agreed upon and, therefore, required functionality.
The ability to foresee the impacts of changes to APIs can depend on the maturity of an engineering team and its ability to collaborate across departments, time zones and varying levels of technical expertise. Tools and guidelines that promote standardization and collaboration can prevent mishaps from overlooking or being blind to negative downstream effects.
Documentation is Key
Whether we’re talking about being able to trust a single source of truth for the most up-to-date version of a published API or the latest edition of a mixer’s manual for tried-and-true drink recipes, clear and concise documentation is key. But it’s also not enough for this documentation to simply exist.
It seems like common sense—although you’ve probably worked somewhere where it wasn’t—that your API documentation also needs to be easily accessible, understandable and usable. Ensuring all of these things leads to smoother onboarding and a positive developer experience and, ultimately, to wider adoption of a functional, performant API that meets or even exceeds expectations.
API documentation is often the first point of contact a developer has with an API. It serves as a guide, walking developers through the API’s features, endpoints, request/response models and error messages. It also provides insight into the underlying business logic and unique characteristics of an API.
Good API documentation follows the principle of a single source of truth, meaning that it should be comprehensive, up-to-date, and consistent. It should always mirror the actual behavior of the API, reducing the guesswork for developers and minimizing the potential for misunderstandings and errors.
Just as a mixologist relies on a detailed and accurate cocktail recipe to deliver a pleasing experience to a patron, API developers depend on good documentation to create and deliver useful, value-add APIs and powerful applications.
Continuous Improvement = Continuous Education
Like a mixologist who meticulously adjusts the ingredients of a cocktail or who creates new cocktails to meet the evolving tastes of customers, developers must constantly adapt their APIs to meet changing market demands, business needs and industry standards.
This is achieved through a potent blend of market research, collaboration, adherence to standards and governance and meticulous testing. However, as software development, testing and deployment technologies and processes continue to evolve, the tech industry must continue educating itself and refining its practices.
With a mindset focused on constant learning and continuous improvement and a dependable single source of truth as their guide, development teams can confidently serve up exceptional API experiences in every release. In the end, the aim is to create APIs that are reliable and easy to consume and that meet the unique needs of the moment–much like a mixologist’s perfect beverage.
