Providing software development kits (SDKs) in multiple of the leading programming languages is a common aspect of operating modern APIs. It is increasingly common to generate SDKs using the OpenAPI technical contract for an API, but requires the most complete and robust version of an OpenAPI to be able to generate useful SDKs–something API service providers and open source tooling providers have emerged to help API producers deliver SDKs.
Which programming languages you should prioritize when providing SDKs will depend on the use cases for your APIs and your awareness of your API consumers needs. Delivering high quality SDKs is not easy across multiple programming languages, and authentication, and other API design considerations can introduce more complexity into the SDK generation process. Even with these challenges, SDKs are an expected part of producing and consuming APIs, and should be present in any API contract.
Open-source tooling for generating SDKs from OpenAPI artifacts is where any SDK work should begin, but once you learn more, it is common to choose one of the leading SDK generation services, due to the nuance and complexity of delivering SDKs for different programming languages. Don’t invest too much of your teams core time to delivering SDKs, and make sure you keep them delivering the value your business provides, and not reinventing the wheel when it comes to generating client SDKs for HTTP APIs and Webhooks.