Visions Of My Perfect API Design Editor Using Electron

Darrel Miller(@darrel_miller) reminded me of the desktop development platform Electron the other day, with his story on Moving Beyond the Browser with JavaScript and Hypermedia. I had been eyeballing Electron as a potential candidate for my perfect API design editor, something I honestly don't have the bandwidth to build, but is something I enjoy pushing forward in thought.

If you aren't familiar with Electron, it is what powers popular desktop version of the apps that I use most--Github, and Slack. The open source desktop framework, developed and maintained Github, allows you to deliver simple, easy to maintain desktop experiences, using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript--powered by Chromium and Node.js. Electron is appealing to me because it allows me to use the tech that I am most fluent in, to deliver high quality desktop apps, but also as Darrel mentions in his story, it has the potential to improve on the quality of JavaScript apps we build--giving us C grade JavaScript people a framework to live within. ;-)

I have a pretty clear vision in my head of the API design editor that I would like to see developed. I doubt this will be something I will have the time to develop personally, but I would like to encourage others to develop API design editors using Electron, and encourage a focus on it being extensible, allowing 3rd party, API driven API design features to be added--keeping the editor simple, with almost every feature living as an extension.

I think the API workflow and life-cycle will be different for each API provider, and we need to be able to have the features that we need most, right at our fingertips. Through my profiling of 917 companies, in 223 business sectors, with 882 APIs cataloged, and 407 Swagger definitions so far, I intend to provide API design tips and dictionary functionality based upon popular / successful API designs

Anyways, back the actual work at hand. I just wanted to revive these visions of my perfect API design editor, so I can add to, and make sure it is connected with the potential for developing the next killer API design editor, using Electron.