Ask HN: How do you build the perfect SDK?

[gcatalfamo]

Hello HN, we are building 2 sdks (iOS & Android) to create an easy way for developers to connect their apps to our PaaS. (www.xensify.com) We already have the first release up and running but we are working to create something that is truly remarkable in terms of B2D or devops experience.

Are there any must-read guides we should follow? Any tip, hint, suggestion, dos and donts some experienced Sdk/library developer could share with us?

A note: the sdk is wrapping a RESTful set of Apis

Thanks! Cheers

[benologist]

I always focus on simplicity for the people who have to do the integrations -

1) make it super easy to integrate your SDK into any project

2) documentation solves common requirements and problems

3) samples provide a starting point for getting additional value

To help this I try and minimizing steps required for integration, my preferred method of integration is "copy this folder to your project" which is something developers of all backgrounds can achieve easily, and then I write documentation and code examples that emphasize how you can get started immediately, and samples for more specific examples.

You can see my approach in action at http://playtomic.org (lots of examples) and http://playtomic.org/api/as3.html (lots of docs with code samples).

[gcatalfamo]

thank you for the advice, it's very appreciated