2 ms·

Sorry but I disagree with most of that. An API is hardly just a bunch of short phrases that all programmers use as common parlance. That's That's why Software

• peeters 15y ago
  You don't have to apologize, those aren't my opinions. I was summing up Google's motion, which has 6 parts. My particular focus is on API design too, and I know the art that comes into it. But I would say that some APIs DO fall into this. Calling the equals method "equals" and having it take one argument and return a boolean is comparable to a "short phrase". There aren't many other ways to express the concept. When you start to look at a library or component as a whole though, it starts to take on a lot more value and uniqueness. You only have to start comparing mocking or assertion libraries in Java to realize that a huge portion of the differentiation between the libraries (and why people choose one over another) is the way it reads and its expressiveness, not its implementation details. And I think some teams at Google recognize this too, if you look at Guava and Guice.
• Drbble 15y ago
  But the creativity in the API is inseparable from compatibility, and compatibility is fair use. When you take out the portion that is required for legally protected compatibility, what's left is documentation and implementation, neither of which Google copied.