[Editor’s note: This is a part of a series of blog posts summarizing the proceedings from the recent Nordic Tour.]

We were very fortunate to have Holger Reinhardt, Product Architect & Business Developer at Layer 7, with us for part of the recent Nordic Tour. He posed the question to the attendees of the Stockholm and Copenhagen events: Do You Want a SDK with that API?

He touched on the following points as he unpacked this question:

• Designing an API is easy, but effective API design is difficult.
• SDKs allow developers to consume an API quickly, and to prototype new solutions using an API.
• The best cases for using an SDK are to speed up “time to first use.”
• Two of the biggest difficulties with using SDKs in production applications are that:
  1. Using the SDK may introduce a lot of unwanted dependencies that can have an adverse effect on your product; and
  2. May be overkill if the needs you have for the API are relatively few.
• The rule of thumb for both API consumers and providers is to use/provide SDKs for prototyping and direct consumption of the API for production usage.

His presentation in Copenhagen was recorded and is available on YouTube.

His slides are available in the Nordic APIs Slideshare stream.

Thanks again to Holger and Layer 7 for a great presentation and for your ongoing help in making the Nordics programmable!