Developer experience is not a soft concern. It determines how quickly developers integrate your API, how many support tickets they file, how many abandon the integration and use a competitor, and how they describe your product to other developers. An API with good developer experience turns integrators into advocates. An API with poor developer experience turns them into complaints.

Good DX is not a single feature or a checklist item added at the end of the design process. It emerges from a series of small decisions made throughout design and implementation. Every naming convention, every error message, every documentation page, and every SDK is a DX decision.

REST APIs organize their surface around resources — the nouns of your domain. How you identify, name, and structure those resources determines whether your API feels intuitive or requires constant documentation reference. Good URL design is not aesthetic preference. It is communication: URLs tell developers what the API contains, how it is organized, and how to navigate it. Done well, a developer can infer what endpoints exist from the ones they already know.