Why do APIs matter?


Tim Lane, Software Developer at ACME Corporation
They are an easy way to make data available. I don't have to learn a lot about or care about your back end or the programming languages that you use. APIs make it easy for me to provide data, code, and other resources inside and outside my company in many different applications. API gateways make it easy to do the authentication, rate limiting, and other things I don't like to do over and over with each API I build. So I really like being the guy who can create easy, simple to use APIs that can be used in any way you like in any type of application. The best part of all of this is I don't have to do any front end work.
Kin Lane, API Evangelist at API Evangelist LLC
Well, APIs literally power everything around us. They're behind all those icons on our phone. They're behind the web and mobile applications that we depend on for our business. They power transit, our buildings, our cars, our televisions, and they touch every aspect of our personal and professional lives. We all make thousands of API calls each day, and they digitally and physically guide us through our day. APIs matter, like, like electricity, water, sewer, and other utilities matter. But they're way more universal. APIs matter to us personally and professionally. And everyone should have some awareness of them. And professionally, you should really be expanding this awareness. Whether you are a business or a technical. Your awareness and control over APIs will define and control your career, how your business does, and in your personal life.
Sebastian Loch, Business Development at FatSecret
Well, I think APIs are the backbone of modern, modern day IT infrastructure and to build scalable IT infrastructure and solutions, especially when you touch so many lives, like we do in the, in the health space and the nutrition space and weight loss space, I think you need to have robust APIs in order to power. You know, these solutions both on the web and for mobile apps for millions and millions of users every day.
Daniel Kocot, Head of API Consulting at codecentric AG
In the, in the end, from, for me, everybody's talking about digital products all the time. So for me, an API is a real digital product. I can really use it. I can really. Make other things possible, drive innovation around the whole thing. So this is, this is for me, the starting point. And to be honest, I don't really like to talk about APIs because here in Germany, they're very mean annotated. So every, when everybody speaks here about APIs, it's always rest. So there's nothing more. So we are really switching into more talking about interfaces to, to get into the old thing and say, okay, it's an interface. Forget about the term API, because when, when you say API, you mean maybe something that's, that's not really state of the art anymore. Yeah. Because when we, when we talk here with customers, it's always, yeah, I want to do REST APIs because somebody told us that's the thing to do. You think, ah, yeah, what are the use cases? What do you want to do? So there, there's still a lot of misunderstanding here. And
Robert Buchanan, API Evangelist at Procter & Gamble
I mean, APIs have always mattered. The revolution of API is really, uh, in the early two thousands when Roy Fielding came out with the restful architecture and really the coining of web services really kicked it off. But we've been using API since computers existed. It's just the exposure now in today's world. When we look at APIs, why they matter is their multi billion dollar avenue for revenue integration, streamlining of conversations between companies, but also internal to companies. So, you know, with that massive popularity and the value add that they can bring, we can now start answering a lot of problems that previously took a lot of, um, you know, individuals to do the work. Now we can automate that systems. Now we can really do events, um, event streaming and other capabilities to again. Uh, ultimately streamlined to get more products out to answer more business problems and realistically influence our customers.

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