The Api Paradox • Hacker News Board

Re: The Api Paradox

#41

Post by AznHisoka » Thu, Apr 11, 2013, 2:18 PM UTC

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #19

In startups, we often tell each other that "the idea is useless", that is, startups are not about the technical details of the idea, they're about the human-to-human interaction of people and your business. This is also true about data. Startups are not about the data . A dozen companies did what Dropbox did, but there was only one Dropbox. Everybody did search, but there is only one Google, and so forth. Yes, people…

"Startups are not about the data. A dozen companies did what Dropbox did, but there was only one Dropbox. Everybody did search, but there is only one Google, and so forth."

Maybe I'm missing something, but DropBox was just a very well-implemented GUI for backing up files - there was no "special sauce data".

As for Google, one could argue that their data (or their index) was one of their competitive advantages. They started crawling pages back in 1998. They basically have a 15 year head start over any new competitors that want to enter the field today. And their index is vastly superior to Bing's/Yahoo's.

So I would disagree that startups are not about the data. For a lot of them, without the data, they'd just be a fancy, useless CRUD GUI.

Re: The Api Paradox

#42

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Apr 11, 2013, 2:44 PM UTC

Gmo wrote: post #33

jacques_chester wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well in all fairness, outside of La Francophonie , "Jacques" is not a common name. And for English speakers it's just chock full of exciting traps. My favourite is putting 'c' and 'q' next to each other. In French that's a single sound; in English it says "new syllable, please! edit: > Jacqueses! (Jacuqi?) Jacqueses would be closest (-ii is a Latin pluralisation, Jacques comes from Jacob which is Hebrew). There's an…

I do think he is from Dutch origin though (Because he talked in the past about one of his experience with QNX in the Netherlands)

Dutch is correct.

Re: The Api Paradox

#43

Post by websitescenes » Thu, Apr 11, 2013, 6:15 PM UTC

Great writeup. Agree with everything that was said. I am currently building a service with much of the functionality based upon an API. The concerns the author has mirror my own. Perhaps there should be an API code of ethics; somewhat like open source licensing. Not one for regulation but it would be nice to have some assurances for both parties involved.

Re: The Api Paradox

#44

Post by etfb » Fri, Apr 12, 2013, 7:12 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #5

etfb wrote: post #4

s/Api\'s/APIs/g s/Api/API/g I know it's nitpicky, but the error makes it painful to read the article. Obviously I'm blaming nobody, and to judge from his name the author is probably fluent in more languages than me. But it's a user-friendliness thing. It would help.

Thanks, I'll fix those. Ok, fixed. Have an upvote :) & thanks again!

No, YOU have an upvote!

Thanks!