Re: How to Design an Application Programmers' Interface (API)

[Kilgallen@eisner.decus.org.nospam (Larry Kilgallen)]

In article <39940266.15161093@netwood.net>, "E. Robert Tisdale" <edwin@netwood.net> writes:
> Larry Kilgallen wrote:
> 
>> But library developers and application programmers
>> can work independently even with a lousy API design,
>> so long as they use the Ada language.
>> Write the specification for the library first
>> (it can even be written by the application programmer)
>> and then have each side code using that specification.
> 
> Please explain what you mean by API.
> I believe that your specification is a specification of the API
> or, at least, the specification of the Ada language binding.
> 
>> > An API is a contract
>> > between library developers and application programmers.
>>
>> And the implementation of that contract
>> is the specification of the library package.
>>
>> If you are going to post these generalities to the Ada newsgroup,
>> please be aware of the features of the Ada language.
> 
> Why?
> Because Ada deals with them formally and explicitly?
> I'm not advocating any one computer programming language
> over another.  But please feel free to do so if you wish.

If you want to discuss specifics, please trim the discussion to
comp.lang.ada only.  If you want to discuss generalities, please
remove comp.lang.ada.  Your generalities are totally out of place
in comp.lang.ada and only lead to noisy fruitless extended wasted
threads if past experience is any guide.