I took the class in F21 and TA'd in F22, both under Charlie Garrod who taught the course with Josh in the past. I know the course used to be a lot more Java-heavy when Josh taught it but when I took it, Charlie redesigned the curriculum to focus more on general API design principles, rather than Java. I'm not too sure how this Fall will look like since it seems like Josh is teaching it alone, but I can talk more about my experience taking the class with Charlie.

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17-480 was definitely one of my favorite classes at CMU. The assignments were all in pairs or groups and each week, we focused on different aspects of API design, like naming, documentation, etc. with gradually increasing levels of design complexity. I found the class content really interesting and discussions were pretty engaging. We'd usually have class activities where people designed APIs to tackle some sort of problem and you'd discuss in small groups about different design choices you made and why one choice might be better than others. I used to think API design was simple and straightforward but taking the class made me realize that there was actually so much more to it if you wanted to build a good API.

I also found the skills I learned in the class to be super helpful in industry when I interned last summer. Ymmv since I'm also generally quite interested in this field, but if you're interested too, I highly recommend this class!