Contents Foreword .............................................................................................................................................. xv Preface ............................................................................................................................................... xvii Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................................ xxiii Author Biography .............................................................................................................................. xxv CHAPTER 1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Introduction.................................................................................................. 1 What Are Application Programming Interfaces? ....................................................1 1.1.1 Contracts and Contractors ..............................................................................1 1.1.2 APIs in C ++ ....................................................................................................3 What's Different About API Design? .....................................................................4 Why Should You Use APIs? ...................................................................................6 1.3.1 More Robust Code .........................................................................................6 1.3.2 Code Reuse .....................................................................................................7 1.3.3 Parallel Development .....................................................................................9 When Should You Avoid APIs?............................................................................10 API Examples .........................................................................................................11 1.5.1 Layers of APIs..............................................................................................11