On the conceptual level, yes. A good number of API's don't actually start as API's. Once they work into that larger scheme of maintainability, they need to be carefully thought out according to the current methods and procedures that they need to fit
right now. In doing that initial evaluation, you also need to look at how they are going to evolve as best you can.
Right now I deal with this since we have our own authentication services for our labs and I have to maintain a legacy "API," if you will. Half of the code is well structured. The other half is spaghetti. Let's just say that there are a lot of programmers here who enjoy global variables. A lot of global variables...
Firm evaluation of the API needs to accomplish the task at hand, as well as be open for expansion. I enjoy C++'s expansionability as well as Java and Perl's. It just depends on the task at hand. I'm pulling a lot more things into Perl because of code handling (plus management has finally smiled on Perl for development and is questioning our evil proprietary WinBatch crap), and because of general love of the language.
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