Dear “API providers”, I don’t want a relationship.
tommorris.org
Dear “API providers”, I don’t want a relationship.
1–10 of 52 posts
Re: Dear “API providers”, I don’t want a relationship.
#2This is a quite arrogant post. I do not make APIs but I can understand some needs of the API providers.
First of all you are being arrogant because you if you just want an URL and nothing more means that for you every API must be free and this is totally bullshit. Also giving you a URL and nothing more gives me no control on what you do. You could harm my service by doing too many request or god knows what and I could do (almost)nothing without hurting maybe other developers. Conclusion: think of the others before ranting.
P.S. the code samples are there help all the people that are not great developers as you.
Re: Dear “API providers”, I don’t want a relationship.
#3Just the other day I went to use the good old fashioned twitter API to find that it had been deprecated in favor of a new one that requires that I do everything differently in order to get the same results. Really irked me. I can empathize with this guy.
Re: Dear “API providers”, I don’t want a relationship.
#4This is a quite arrogant post. I do not make APIs but I can understand some needs of the API providers. First of all you are being arrogant because you if you just want an URL and nothing more means that for you every API must be free and this is totally bullshit. Also giving you a URL and nothing more gives me no control on what you do. You could harm my service by doing too many request or god knows what and I coul…
Nowhere in the post he writes that the APIs must be free. Maybe he just wants to pay with money instead of time and attention.
Re: Dear “API providers”, I don’t want a relationship.
#5This is a quite arrogant post. I do not make APIs but I can understand some needs of the API providers. First of all you are being arrogant because you if you just want an URL and nothing more means that for you every API must be free and this is totally bullshit. Also giving you a URL and nothing more gives me no control on what you do. You could harm my service by doing too many request or god knows what and I coul…
Nowhere in the post he writes that the APIs must be free. Maybe he just wants to pay with money instead of time and attention.
That would imply the need for an API key though, and he mentions that he doesn't want those.
Re: Dear “API providers”, I don’t want a relationship.
#6[deleted]
Re: Dear “API providers”, I don’t want a relationship.
#7This is a quite arrogant post. I do not make APIs but I can understand some needs of the API providers. First of all you are being arrogant because you if you just want an URL and nothing more means that for you every API must be free and this is totally bullshit. Also giving you a URL and nothing more gives me no control on what you do. You could harm my service by doing too many request or god knows what and I coul…
Counterpoint - http://api.dribbble.com
Re: Dear “API providers”, I don’t want a relationship.
#8I would be very interested in knowing more about what exactly his problems were. What APIs what he trying to use? I work on backend systems and build APIs or related systems everyday so getting a rant is not of much help. :(
* Auth Tokens - needed.
* Code samples - good place to get started.
* Documentation - really, I am yet to see a good API without documentation.
* Blog - Okay not always helpful but other times its a way to tell users about new features, downtimes, changes.
* business development/relationship/ecosystem - not important but can be nice to have in case you get stuck or are building something that is more than just a crappy weekend hack.
Re: Dear “API providers”, I don’t want a relationship.
#9Just the other day I went to use the good old fashioned twitter API to find that it had been deprecated in favor of a new one that requires that I do everything differently in order to get the same results. Really irked me. I can empathize with this guy.
Yeah. I wanted to read some tweets, but apparently I now need a stupid API token and have to do OAuth! What happened to the good old days of session-less read only-mode APIs?! :(
Re: Dear “API providers”, I don’t want a relationship.
#10Ha. I've had the same thoughts many times. Never thought anyone else felt this way.
At some stage, people started to get weird ideas about URL schemes (aka "API's") like it's some sort of marketing thing. API keys. WTF? Imagine if early Google was required to get an "API key" for every site they crawled. Who came up with this silly idea of "API keys"?
In the 90's, I remember decipering URL schemes in order to do crawling long before anyone used the term "API's" to describe URL's. They are usually quite predictable, since almost every website used the same software. And they're even more predictable today. Crwaling got easier. Hmmm, I wonder why.
I also remember how most URL's used to be non-descriptive. Not true anyomre. Google has changed everything. Sites _want_ to be crawled now. But funnily enough they think they can make money from it. Heh, good luck with that.
If you want to charge money, then put the data behind a password and a paywall. And watch traffic plummet.