Re: Developer's Kit

[Susan Purcell <spurcell -at- CISCO -dot- COM>]

Hi Xiang,

I have done SDKs (software developer's kits) a few times.

In a nutshell, some quick advice:

1.  Ask your developer audience which SDK they have used in
the past that they have liked the most.  Ask enough of them until
you start to get repetition in their answers.  Then you will know you
have found the right one(s).

2.  Pattern your SDK after the one that they like.

3.  Also try to spend time with a developer that is using the SDK, if it
exists now.  This way you will find out what they really need.  Another
way to find out is to ask the people who work tech support with the
developers.  Another way is to ask the developers, though this is not
usually satisfactory because the developers' minds don't run in this
direction and most of them cannot adopt this point of view very easily
unless you limit your question to, "What information do you need to know
in order to produce your product?"  Then be sure to provide that information
in your SDK.

In general, there is no set bag of standard information to go into your SDK
because all software is different.  That's why you have got to find out what
it is that your developers need and provide that.  Be sure to differentiate
between the kind of information that the API authors give you and the kind
that
your SDK audience needs.  These will be radically different in most cases
because
of their disparate points of view.

Susan

At 03:32 PM 1/12/99 -0500, you wrote:
>To all:
>
>I am going to write a developer's kit for a software program for the
>company I am working for, I have not done anything like this before,
>anybody out there did this before? or anybody has the suggestions about
>what should be in the kit, and the structure of this kit, or any other
>advice?
>
>Thanks.
>
>Xiang Li
>
>
>From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000==
>


 From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000=