API Documentation

One of the main issues this semester was the lack of available for each individual API that many of us attempted to use. Google has set up discussion groups and blogs that will assist you in the development of a workable API, but even then there are many situations that are not easily worked around or understood.

An example of this struggle would be with the attempted use of the C-Net API. There were so many variations of it [Java Script, PHP, etc] that I believe the developers lost the simplicity that API's are supposed to achieve. There really should not be a reason why implementation of this sort should be difficult, but it remains so.

Even if there is documentation for an API, many of them have usage limits that are simply unreasonable. I have seen examples where there was only an allowance of three requests per hour - just testing the API would have put you over the limit. Many of the methodologies are created by people who quickly put something together, rather than those who were actually trying to make life a little easier. Worst of all, it is extremely difficult to read and understand code that was not developed yourself.

All things being equal, finding documentation turned out to be a project in and of itself. I hope everyone had a good time creating their projects.