From: Scott Meyers (usenet_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-09-14 00:17:51
Roman Neuhauser wrote:
> I'd like to see the rationale. What's the benefit?
This is excerpted from pp. 19-21, where I'm not bothering to include
ellipses to show where I've elided information. So this is a set of
their words (mostly full sentences) knitted together to try to show
their arguments, but it doesn't show all their text, so for the full
story, you need to consult the book.
[Begin pseudoquote]
Many developers expect to learn the basics of a new framework very
quickly. By experimenting with the framework on an ad hoc basis. The
initial encounter with a badly designed API can leave a lasting
impression of complexity and discourage some from using the framework.
This is why it is very important for frameworks to provide a very low
barrier for developers who just want to experiment.
Many developers experiment with an API to discover what it does and then
adjust their code to get their program to do what they really want.
There are several requirements that APIs must meet to be easy to
experiment with:
- It has to be easy to start using an API, regardless of whether it does
what the developer wants it to do. A framework that requires an
extensive initialization or instantiating several types and hooking them
together is not easy to experiment with.
- It has to be easy to find and fix mistakes resulting from incorrect
usage of an API. For example, APIs should throw exceptions clearly
describing what needs to be done to fix the problems.
Scott