Stamen is the classic “position player” of the web app industry. They do really great work but are rarely singled out for it. Stamen’s job is to make other companies better. They’re mostly known for those really cool flash data mashups available at Digg Labs
Michal Migurski discussed some of the things they learned from Digg when designing the Labs API. Here are some highlights
- Do dates as UNIX timestamp – There is a deep religious philosophy surrounding this kernel of wisdom, but at its center timestamps are just best practice. If you aren’t a unix acolyte, UNIX timestamps are seconds since Jan 1st 1970 (called epoch in some circles). This arbitrarily decided date format is the universal solvent that cleans up all date messes. Trust us, just use it.
- Stick to core formats like XML & JSON. He also mentioned Serialized PHP and Javascript callbacks which are gaining in popularity
- Unit tests are the single best way to coordinate design and development – One of the stories he told about working with the Digg community was that as designers they had a hard time syncing with the programmers at Digg. Unit Tests were the best way to make sure that what Stamen was designing would work on what Digg was writing in their API. If you don’t know what Unit Tests are, start with the wiki page on it
- Expect your database to change – APIs that need to talk to the database (and really, what API doesn’t) will need to be updated as often as the database changes. DB changes can happen quickly at a client company like Digg who is thinking up new features in the wild. That can make for a tough, moving target to hit.
- If you defer a feature at launch it’ll take forever to get to it – This is more of a truism than any great pearl of wisdom, at least to an experienced developer. Once code “ships” you rarely ever have the luxury to revisit missing pieces. The logic goes that if it wasn’t important enough to hold up the launch, then its likely not important enough to hold up the next launch either. At Digg the missing part is the Writable API I believe, though it was hard to hear near the end of the session