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Micro APIs for Everyday Use

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61–70 of 91 posts

Re: Micro APIs for Everyday Use

#61

Post by TheDudeMan »

I like this model. It's something I wanted to do a few years ago but of course didn't. I think this works best for complex and expensive computational APIs. For instance, "do an FFT on these 2^N-1 data points" or "factor this 20-digit number". Things that are fairly easy to state in words, but tricky to implement correctly. Maybe you can't find a good implementation in your language.

Also, this is probably most useful for prototyping scenarios. In production, you want something faster and cheaper.

Re: Micro APIs for Everyday Use

#62

Post by mLuby »

asim wrote: post #25
rishav_sharan wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likely an unreasonable ask, specially considering that you folks are just starting out - but have you considered adding a free tier for hobbyists and pet projects? Most of you competitors have some form of free tier and cheapo devs like me would prefer to embrace some complexity over paying upfront for just simple projects. the $5 starting bit is great but is not the same as a limited free tier. Overall love the idea…

Free tier was something we've had previously but it became hard to justify because of our third party integrations and what it costs us. It might be something we try figure out in the future. Thanks for the feedback.

That's reasonable—glad to know you considered it. Two alternatives to the free tier for single or small-batch uses so that you don't need to deal with payment information and reduce sign-up friction:

User completes a human-level task (for another API even) somewhere between CAPTCHA and MTurk to earn a few API calls.

Do something with ads near or even on the result to earn a few API calls. (Prototyping dev eyeballs are valuable.)

Re: Micro APIs for Everyday Use

#63

Post by lloydatkinson »

mLuby wrote: post #59
lloydatkinson wrote: post #58

How do I create an API to offer on the site? I don't have one right now, but I know from experience the kind of API's that people need but don't want to deal with creating from scratch themselves.

Is there an API for creating, or at least registering, APIs? (Maybe save that for 2022-04-01.)

why that date?

Re: Micro APIs for Everyday Use

#64

Post by zachrose »

AaronFriel wrote: post #48

1. Why would I trust that this will stick around if I make a business on this? 2. Why would I pay someone to "generate IDs" at $1/10k requests? 3. If the DB API was performant and supported full SQL, it looks like it would cost $business I know of two orders of magnitude more than current cloud spend to switch to it. (They would not, because of compliance.) For whom is this the right pricing model for? I compared the…

Because not everything is a reliable business? Sometimes it’s nice to make something for fun or practical.

I teach front end web development to a total beginner who is only just becoming aware that programming a web app with persistent state shared amongst users requires separate technologies than HTML/CSS/JS. The table API could be ideal for her. The alternatives: shared hosting with PHP/MySQL, anything AWS, or even Google Sheets/Airtable are all much bigger cans of worms that just slow down her cycle of getting things out there and learning the whole of the SLDC.

Re: Micro APIs for Everyday Use

#66

Post by lsiebert »

asim wrote: post #25
rishav_sharan wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likely an unreasonable ask, specially considering that you folks are just starting out - but have you considered adding a free tier for hobbyists and pet projects? Most of you competitors have some form of free tier and cheapo devs like me would prefer to embrace some complexity over paying upfront for just simple projects. the $5 starting bit is great but is not the same as a limited free tier. Overall love the idea…

Free tier was something we've had previously but it became hard to justify because of our third party integrations and what it costs us. It might be something we try figure out in the future. Thanks for the feedback.

A free tier that didn't allow third party integrations might work if that's really your sticking point.

But honestly nothing wrong with charging money for a service.

Re: Micro APIs for Everyday Use

#67

Post by killingtime74 »

zachrose wrote: post #64
AaronFriel wrote: post #48

1. Why would I trust that this will stick around if I make a business on this? 2. Why would I pay someone to "generate IDs" at $1/10k requests? 3. If the DB API was performant and supported full SQL, it looks like it would cost $business I know of two orders of magnitude more than current cloud spend to switch to it. (They would not, because of compliance.) For whom is this the right pricing model for? I compared the…

Because not everything is a reliable business? Sometimes it’s nice to make something for fun or practical. I teach front end web development to a total beginner who is only just becoming aware that programming a web app with persistent state shared amongst users requires separate technologies than HTML/CSS/JS. The table API could be ideal for her. The alternatives: shared hosting with PHP/MySQL, anything AWS, or even…

Firebase and Heroku would fill that niche

Re: Micro APIs for Everyday Use

#68

Post by lethologica »

mLuby wrote: post #60
jokethrowaway wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do support, q/a, maintenance, performance improvement for hundreds API with thousands of quirks when you can sell shovels as if they were made of gold? In a similar vein, how much visibility does micro API bring to my API compared to established platforms? Even assuming it's a lot, why not just publish my API on all of them?

Why not have an API that publishes your API to all of them?

It’s APIs all the way down.

Re: Micro APIs for Everyday Use

#69

Post by shoo »

TheDudeMan wrote: post #61

I like this model. It's something I wanted to do a few years ago but of course didn't. I think this works best for complex and expensive computational APIs. For instance, "do an FFT on these 2^N-1 data points" or "factor this 20-digit number". Things that are fairly easy to state in words, but tricky to implement correctly. Maybe you can't find a good implementation in your language. Also, this is probably most usefu…

FFTs or integer factorisation are pure-functional tasks and seem more suitable for a simple library call and local computation, without involving the network or adding new external dependencies -- assuming you have code running somewhere with sufficient compute.

i find APIs that let you interact with or observe the world far more compelling (e.g. get the latex forex rates, make a phone call, etc), especially if they put a nice stable interface in front of a lot of complex or evolving details you'd rather not have to care about.

Re: Micro APIs for Everyday Use

#70

Post by osullip »

Best of luck! I had a similar idea and never followed it up.

The way I see it is this: there are always a bunch of devs learning their trade.

At one point I would have great ideas but be missing two or three key components that I couldn't build.

I searched for out of the box solution for one time tokens and for a way to store date in transit for automation - nothing existed that I could use so I built it - but I've 20 years experience now and wanted to share my solutions.

Yes, you can do all of this in AWS yourself, but sometime you just want to solve it and move on.

Sometime you want to tell a client it is 0.0001 per record and that their business needs $5 per month to automate/integrate/remove something that costs them a lot more.

And charge them a decent rate for the solution, not the tools.

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