Latest Copy Of The API Evangelist API Design Industry Guide

I’ve been struggling to get the latest edition of my industry guides out the door. I have a new Adobe Indesign format which I really like as a constraint, but is also pushing my desktop publishing skills. What is really kicking my ass though, is the editing. This latest copy was professionally edited, but I ran out of money to pay him on future guides, and I ended up making some slight changes to this one as well. I am very self-conscious of my grammar and spelling mistakes. I’m capable of editing my own stuff, and my grammar and spelling is high quality. The problem is that I’m too close to the content, and with each edit I make changes, which then introduce new mistakes. Also my brain moves too fast sometimes, and I just make silly mistakes, and overlook things by just reading it the way my brain intended.

Anyways, I’m over stressing on it all. I just want to get my guides out. I have too much of a back log, and since I can afford a professional editor to shadow my work, I’m just going to put them out there. If you find mistakes, feel free to submit a Github issue on the repo for my API design research. I have too many guides to get out, and it is more important to me that my research moves forward, I spend the time distilling things down into a guide, and hitting publish. I can’t wait for perfect. If folks discount my work because I’m moving so fast, too bad. It is more important that the knowledge is in my head. If you want to help fund me so I can properly afford an editor, I welcome that as well–I have one who will work with me full time, I just need the cash! Anyways, I’m finally getting around to publishing this edition of the API design industry guide, which I hope provides a snapshot of the space.

My API Evangelist API Design Industry Guide is not meant for the API echo chamber. It is meant for executives, business folks, IT, and developers who are looking to do APIs outside of the mainstream tech community. My goal isn’t to cover in detail every aspect of API design. My goal is to cover the industry of API design, while focusing on the highlights of each working area. I track on the service providers who deliver solutions in the API design space, as well as some of the open source tooling that is available. Then I try to look at some of the common building blocks of APIs design, with an emphasis on REST and hypermedia. I also inject a handful of one and two page articles in there covering a variety of topics, as well as how the world of API design is shifting with the introduction of new approaches like gRPC and GraphQL. My definition of API design is not dogmatically REST. It is about pragmatically stepping back from API development and thinking about the best patterns available to us in the space.

Once I get all of my core research area published in this new format, I will work to update them more regularly, and try to keep them rolling forward with new versions. If you would like to sponsor one, or invest in one of the other 85+ areas of my API industry research, feel free to reach out. Thanks for your patience while I found the mojo to work on these again, and your help in identifying any errors or mistakes I’ve made. Also, take notice my new approach to making these available, where you can always download them for free, or you can purchase the latest copy using Gumroad for a small fee. This helps support my work, and you’ll be added to the mailing list, and automatically get a free copy when I update in the future. I’m moving forward to work on my API deployment, and management guides, as well as some sponsored guides in the areas of data, database, and the trend of fake news, accounts, bots, and more.

Thanks again for your support!