Imagine having native support for OpenAPI and/or other API specification languages built into your programming language. By merely importing a specification document, we would obtain a typed interface to a remote service, ready to be used, without the accidental complexity of dealing with HTTP or (de)serialization.

Sounds both exciting and scary, right? (Anyone remember xml literals?) I’d rather have a programming language powerful enough to support the above experience as a library. The good news is, Scala is already capable of that today, via its compile-time metaprogramming functionality.

In this talk, I’m going to present JING, a new library for spec-first OpenAPI endpoints without codegen.

• In the first, beginner friendly part, I will show how JING dramatically lowers the barrier to spec-first development against Web APIs and how it facilitates explorative, type-driven programming without unnecessary complexity.
• Then, I will give a brief peek under the hood and talk about implementation techniques and design decisions.
• Finally, I’m going to ponder other areas where the JING approach can be applied to unlock a simpler, more productive future.