Keynote: A Brief, Opinionated History of the API

Location: Broadway Ballroom, 6th fl.

Duration: 9:00am - 10:10am

Day of week: Thursday

Abstract

APIs have been with us for 65 years or so, but what exactly are they, and where did they come from? They come in all shapes, sizes, and disguises. In this talk, we'll discuss the fascinating history of APIs and look at a few prominent examples with an eye to distilling their essence. We'll conclude with a brief discussion of the current legal status of APIs, and what it means to us as software professionals. 

Speaker: Joshua Bloch

Author of Effective Java, Lead Design of Java Collection API & Carnegie Mellon Professor

Joshua Bloch is the author of Effective Java and coauthor of Java Puzzlers and Java Concurrency in Practice. He is a professor on leave from Carnegie Mellon University. He was formerly the chief Java architect at Google, a distinguished engineer at Sun Microsystems. He led the design and implementation of numerous Java platform features, including the Java 5 language enhancements and the Java Collections Framework. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University and a B.S. in computer science from Columbia University.

Find Joshua Bloch at

Tracks