Imagine if the alphabet changed every year or so. Wouldn’t that make it hard to keep up?

It’s a turbulent time. I find myself gravitating to the advice of Jeff Bezos: focus on the things that don’t change.

Thankfully, the alphabet is one of those. So are what I call the “ABCs of APIs.” You may remember it from conference slides I shared in an early version of EveryDeveloper. I recently revisited these slides, circa 2014, and realized I still evaluate an API with these three steps of the “developer sniff test:”

1. About page: who is behind the API and can I trust them?
2. Blog post: have they published recently and are the topics developer-relevant?
3. Client libraries: do they have SDKs and content oriented around multiple programming languages?

(Conveniently, these start with A, B, and C, but I’m sure that’s a coincidence)

You can use this alphabetical checklist as a high-level compass to make sure you are passing the sniff test. It’s likely one or more of these areas needs improvement.

Now you know where to focus because these developer needs aren’t likely to change.