Our IT guy used to refer to SMTP as Satanic Mail Transfer Protocol. I think he was joking -- it doesn't look too bad.
Ask HN: What's the worst API you've run into?
31–35 of 35 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's the worst API you've run into?
#32WebRTC: The concepts are pretty straight forward, but getting something to work natively without a wrapper or a commercial service seems near-impossible.
Re: Ask HN: What's the worst API you've run into?
#33RETS, (Real Estate Transaction Standard) without a doubt. Its an ancient xml protocol that is still important today but really painful to work with!
Seconded. To be fair, though, it's often not the API itself but the mapping and strange restrictions tied into access to it. Also, the often missing documentation of what is mapped to where, and why. I'll never touch it again!
Re: Ask HN: What's the worst API you've run into?
#34Most market exchanges, more specifically CBOE (Chicago Board Options Exchange). They use FIX Protocol for their API but they don't follow their own spec and so it is just guessing as what they actually want.
It is sooooooo bad. Lots of exchanges have bad API but CBOE is for sure the worst.
Re: Ask HN: What's the worst API you've run into?
#35Why had no one mentioned Netsuite? Their API really makes things difficult for developers. I hate them so much.