History lesson...Microsoft Windows is built as a bundle of exposed API's -- unlike linux with text config files -- and they caused immense pain in the 90's by breaking their bogus contracts. So I beg to differ, API's are not real contracts. In fact I'm sure the heinous behavior of Microsoft's APIs were one of the reasons Java made interfaces a big part of its paradigm.
History lesson...Microsoft Windows is built as a bundle of exposed API's -- unlike linux with text config files -- and they caused immense pain in the 90's by breaking their bogus contracts. So I beg to differ, API's are not real contracts. In fact I'm sure the heinous behavior of Microsoft's APIs were one of the reasons Java made interfaces a big part of its paradigm.