5 ms·

Should you make an open API?

33 points by muscaw 4y ago

Sophira 4y ago
Tom Scott made a wonderful video a while back about open APIs, and about how they (mostly) died out[0]. It's currently called "This Video Has 51,973,714 Views", and I personally believe it's a great watch. [0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=BxV14h0kFs0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=BxV14h0kFs0
- paulmendoza 4y ago
  APIs are more popular than ever. But developers in a weird way aren’t involved. Go look at tools like Tray, Boomi, Zapier, Integromat. They let business users use APIs to connect all their applications without wiring code.
delroth 4y ago
> On the FAIRTIQ side, we do not support this authorisation model yet as we don’t provide an open API So I guess the message from the article is "we love that others provide open APIs but we can't bother".
- VoidWhisperer 4y ago
  The article makes it seem like this is their end goal at some point, and that they are pushing towards having open APIs
onion2k 4y ago
I build APIs with the assumption that they'll be open eventually. If not open to the public then at least a third party or some other part of the company once it grows big enough. As such, all of my APIs are open, but some of them don't have a public endpoint. Working like this pushes me to consider how other people would use an API and think about more than just my use case, to document things properly, and spend more time on the DX. I think it makes my APIs better even if no one else actually ever sees them. The downside is that some of the APIs I've built in the past have a bunch of features no one uses. That's a bad thing.
brunes 4y ago
"Yes". Next.
iamahackerguy 4y ago
Tom Scott made a wonderful video a while back about open APIs, and about how they (mostly) died out[0]. It's currently called "This Video Has 51,973,714 Views", and I personally believe it's a great watch. [0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=BxV14h0kFs0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=BxV14h0kFs0
- Sophira 4y ago
  Is there a particular reason why you copied my comment[0] word-for-word? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30799945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30799945

33 points by muscaw 4y ago

Tom Scott made a wonderful video a while back about open APIs, and about how they (mostly) died out[0]. It's currently called "This Video Has 51,973,714 Views", and I personally believe it's a great watch. [0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=BxV14h0kFs0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=BxV14h0kFs0

paulmendoza 4y ago
APIs are more popular than ever. But developers in a weird way aren’t involved. Go look at tools like Tray, Boomi, Zapier, Integromat. They let business users use APIs to connect all their applications without wiring code.

delroth 4y ago

> On the FAIRTIQ side, we do not support this authorisation model yet as we don’t provide an open API So I guess the message from the article is "we love that others provide open APIs but we can't bother".

VoidWhisperer 4y ago
The article makes it seem like this is their end goal at some point, and that they are pushing towards having open APIs

onion2k 4y ago

I build APIs with the assumption that they'll be open eventually. If not open to the public then at least a third party or some other part of the company once it grows big enough. As such, all of my APIs are open, but some of them don't have a public endpoint. Working like this pushes me to consider how other people would use an API and think about more than just my use case, to document things properly, and spend more time on the DX. I think it makes my APIs better even if no one else actually ever sees them. The downside is that some of the APIs I've built in the past have a bunch of features no one uses. That's a bad thing.

brunes 4y ago

"Yes". Next.

iamahackerguy 4y ago

Sophira 4y ago
Is there a particular reason why you copied my comment[0] word-for-word? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30799945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30799945