Dear Increment readers,

We’re delighted to share our API issue with you. I’ll admit, we had more ideas than we could possibly explore in around 100 printed pages (if we wanted to keep the issue at all reasonably paced!)—but it was an energizing constraint. We’ve opted to share conversations on the impact, design, and context of APIs that we hope will energize you, too.

Working on this issue, I came to love the notion of APIs as more than a compact between machines, but a meaningful facilitator of them between humans. It comes through in most every story, from Anne-Laure Le Cunff’s piece about the role APIs can play in shaping online communities to Alvaro Videla’s reminder that our API design choices can be design tools themselves; Darius Kazemi’s tale of HTTP status codes to JJ Geewax’s practical guidance on versioning that helps us promise a bit less technical hardship to Michelle Bu’s generous, balanced approach to building APIs. Resonantly, Michelle writes, “When you delight a developer, you know you’ve created something surprisingly, meaningfully great.”

We’re always interested in exploring new ideas—not just for the ideas themselves, but for how they can bring us together around the proverbial table. We hope you might share some with us. Visit our submissions page to find out what we’re working on next and to send us your pitches.

Until next time,

Sid Orlando 
Editor in Chief
@ohreallysid