[_pmf_]

For a very deep, thorough and painful treatment instead of feel-good books, read "Practical API Design" by Jaroslav Tulach. Yes, it's Java, but it exemplifies the fundamental tradeoff that the feel-good books ignore: the more powerful you make your API for users, the less potential for evolution and long-term maintenance your API retains.

[monksy]

That is on my queue of books to buy. [Which is below my queue of books to read].

So shouldn't there be a way to balance these requirements?

It seems like we've ignored the ability to batch jobs, do async tasks etc. It sucks... but an API is out of my control.