Case 4: The data formats and communication protocols puzzle: Realigning API design with contemporary practices
You joined a stock broking start-up company that is growing at exponential pace as an Engineering leader. Some of the pressing challenges you are tasked to solve is uncertainty in delivery outcomes in terms of timelines and quality when changes to API contracts are a norm (eg., addition/deletion of fields as input parameters and output result).
In your preliminary assessment you observe that they have their on-demand APIs exposed as RESTfool (not RESTful) services and stream live stock ticks, 20-level market depth data, order updates etc. over web-socket packed as byte array. You see this as your first opportunity of improvement and want to present your case of the what is wrong with this status-quo and propose your recommendations.
Voice out your recommendations considering me as one of the lead developers in your team present in the conference room keen to learning from your experience. But do expect to hear me voicing our constraints as a developer in the course of our conversation.