12-24-2025, 07:40 PM
I'm leading the backend redesign for our company's main service and we're standardizing on a new REST API. I'm debating several design choices, specifically around how to best handle versioning, whether to use HATEOAS principles in practice, and the most intuitive structure for nested resources. For architects who have built large-scale public APIs, what are the most important design principles and conventions you've adopted to ensure long-term maintainability and a good developer experience for third-party users?