Library UX: Using abstraction towards friendlier APIs | Talks
Complicated libraries can be a pain in the butt to use. It's not surprising that there are a lot of 'X for humans ' libraries out there, some of which are mostly wrappers around more frustrating interfaces. This is not a theoretical talk. I'll touch upon theory to give you context, but will then talk about what that means for you in practice so that you can write better libraries. I'll talk about why library UX matters, about abstraction as a general concept, about out what happens when you over/under abstract, and about some useful tips to help build friendly APIs. Meanwhile, I'll show some positive examples from libraries we know and love (flask, SQLAlchemy, Requests, etc). Once you recognize these effects in play, you'll be able to apply them to your own code and make life better for everyone!
Mali Akmanalp
I'm a software engineer who accidentally got into the social sciences. I work at the Growth Lab at the Harvard Center for International Development, where we come up with and test theories as to how and why certain countries develop while other ones don't. I spend most of my time munging data and building data visualization tools. I've worked at a variety of places from my own tiny startup to large software companies to academia. I think writing code is a craft that gets better with curiosity and practice. I love teaching, giving talks, and nerdy things in general.
Oregon Ballroom 203-204
Saturday, 20th May, 15:15 - 15:45
