Just as there is a difference between describing a single house or an entire universe, there is a difference between writing code and producing an API! No matter how much we may know already, there is still much to be explored. Inevitably, we will hit something unexpected, something paradoxical—which, rather paradoxically, is perfectly natural! But why?
Every individual has a knowledge horizon. Objects close to us appear clearly, and as they recede toward the horizon, they become indistinct. What lies beyond the horizon is unknown, and yet we know there is something there. As our knowledge of the world increases, this horizon becomes more distant, and yet we continue to explore. It’s a phenomenon as ineffably human as Edmund Hillary’s “because it is there” reason for climbing Everest.
We test the limits of our horizon, we look around corners, and perhaps we find something bigger, faster, or more beautiful than we’ve ever known before. But sometimes, we find contradictions, as Darwin did when he explored the finches of the Galapagos Islands. His findings challenged orthodoxy, what he thought he knew.
Darwin’s observations were so paradoxical, that it was decades before he published his conclusions as “On the Origin of Species.” The whole process of scientific inquiry is based on our need to find answers to seemingly inexplicable questions, and as each old paradox falls to reason, we find new ones popping up at the edges of our horizon.
The world of software development and API design is no different in this respect. The more complex our systems, the more likely we are to bump into the limits of our knowledge. Our world is full of paradoxes waiting to be discovered and explained; it’s as natural as the process of evolution!
