API Evangelist Conversation with Greg Dennis, Senior Software Engineer at Zeil

Hi, i’m greg dennis. Uh, my current role is with a startup called zeal.That’s z e i l in new zealand Uh, we’re reimagining what a job board can be by focusing primarily on creating an enjoyable candidate experience By reducing job application rework and incorporating useful and functional AI to help candidates develop their careers Uh, it’s jobs, but smarter. My role is building direct integrations [00:01:00] with the various AI, um, the various HR systems that companies use to manage their people in active roles In order to help reduce their workload when posting jobs.

So my, uh, my primary experience with APIs comes with, uh, libraries. Um, I’m, as you mentioned, I’m heavily involved in JSON schema. Um, and as part of that involvement, I build a set of, uh, open source libraries, uh, in. net. So they’re published on nuget. org. Um, and, uh, The idea that an API, uh, when I, when I hear API, I typically just think of a web API, but when I really think about what an API is, I realized that it’s, there are so many more different kinds of API. And one of the things that I, Really have focused on in developing my libraries is what that experience is when using the library. Um, when I first started this journey, uh, I [00:03:00] was actually being introduced to the Jason syntax. Uh, from the, from the get go, um, at the time, the premier Jason library and dot net was Newton soft Jason. And, uh, it has, it recently surpassed 5 billion downloads, which is just absolutely incredible. Um, but it focused heavily on serialization, which is getting the Jason directly into like a domain model. That you might have for your business, um, kind of an object oriented model. Whereas what I needed was a Jason Dom model where I could load in the Jason, I can parse it, mess with the Jason content and then just spit out a new string. I didn’t need an object oriented model. I just needed something to represent the Jason. And while it had that, I couldn’t figure out how to [00:04:00] do it. So I built a new library. Uh, to do that and, um, later on, I learned what serialization is and I understood what Newton soft was trying to do and what it was trying to do. It makes a lot of sense now, but without that context, it wasn’t very intuitive. So that was my first experience with. Um, with a, a library API, um, I’ve got some other examples, uh, if, if you want to dive into those, um, but that’s, that’s pretty much what I think of. What I think of APIs is, is the library experience.

So I started that, that initial, um, JSON DOM library was called Manatee JSON. And, um, I think I started that one almost a decade ago at this point. Uh, it is since, uh, it over time it evolved to include serialization, Jason schema, Jason path, and a number of other things that it supported. Um, and it was all bound up in one package. Um, when dot net released its own, uh, Jason modeling system, uh, system dot text dot Jason, um, it was effectively replacing Newton soft as the de facto, uh, Jason, uh, system to be used in dot net. And so I thought that was a great opportunity to, uh, take my manatee, Jason and retire it and start fresh. And I now have a, uh, a project called Jason everything, uh, you can find the website at Jason, everything. net it’s, uh, Various libraries, [00:06:00] uh, are on NuGet, um, but all the functionality is split out in different libraries so you can pick what you want and you don’t have to get all of the functionality. Uh, you just take what you need.

I think so. I think being able to, to take. Only the functionality that you need is, uh, is much more beneficial than having to take all the functionality. Um, like you mentioned stripe. If if I just want to interact with payments directly, you know, I just want to be able to post a payment and get the payments that. That, um, that I’ve previously posted. I can’t, I can’t download their SDK and only get those things. I download their SDK and I get, uh, access to their entire API. Um, in order to access just those things, I would have to write the client code myself, um, which is less of a lesser, or it’s just a. Lesser experience to do that.

It’s actually, I learned to, I learned it by doing it, um, in building my libraries, I always functioned primarily on function, uh, if it doesn’t work, right, there’s no point in doing it. Um, but beyond that, I wanted to make something that was intuitive and almost enjoyable to use. APIs, I think by their nature are a creative work. Um, when you’re designing an API, um, you want to make sure that, uh, I think, I guess the gold standard for an API would be, Being able to use the API and know what it does without having to go look at the documentation. Um, and so I always tried to make the usability of my libraries such that they didn’t have to go look at the documentation. Of course, I would still write documentation. Um, but the goal was. You know, make it available, make it so that they didn’t have to go, uh, look at the docs.Iif they could use the library just by downloading it, and it’s, you know, [00:09:00] the IntelliSense is there to see what methods are there and it all makes sense that way. That is the primary, uh, the primary experience that you.

I would love to have feedback loops with [00:10:00] with my users. Um, unfortunately, I don’t. And I’m the only thing I can take from that is that people are finding it useful, um, and intuitive enough that they don’t feel like they have to come ask questions. I do get the occasional question, um, and I’ll point them to the documentation or, you know, if it’s not there, I’ll answer, I’ll answer the question and then I’ll go add it to the docs. Um, but then I can take that and kind of tweak the, the user interface. It is basically a user interface. Um, I can tweak the API to, um, make that a little bit easier. Um, but. I always, I do think that, um, simpler is better. So, um, like if you, if you’re building a web API and all you really need to do is expose access to the data that, that [00:11:00] you’re, that you’re hosting, maybe a CRUD API is really the best. Thing for you to do. Um, I think I see a lot of uh, a lot of library developers will try to be overly creative with how you uh, how you go about interacting with with their library and There there are there’s there’s credibility in that But I don’t I don’t think it helps usability and for me, usability is, is, uh, number one.

So, I really just became interested in JSON Schema because it was another thing that I could do with JSON. Um, I was looking to expand the Manatee. json library that I was working on and, um, JSON Schema had started up again after having been silent for a while and I was like, this looks pretty neat. It was very heavily. Focused on validation of Jason data, and it’s and that’s basically what it is. It’s a Jason based, [00:13:00] uh, not really a syntax. It’s a Jason based mechanism for, um, working with and validating. Jason data. Um, that’s what it started as now people use it for all kinds of code generation, documentation, generation, um, form. Yeah. And it’s just so much that, that people have found use for it. Um, so now the challenge that, uh, we in the org are. Or faced with is how do we incorporate or, um, adjust the specification to allow for all of those other use cases that that people, um, have found for it. since Henry has moved on from, uh, JSON Schema into the OpenAPI world, uh, I’ve been, uh, left as the primary author. On the specification, uh, I’ve been doing a lot of work getting edits in and clarifications so that we can move into a new stable, um, a stable era for Jason schema or focusing on stability between versions. Um, which is a big complaint that we’ve had from, from, uh, users before. Um, but yeah, we’ve got a lot of, uh, a lot of PRs in, in place and in progress, and I’ve got a bunch of stuff that I still need to change and hopefully we’ll have something out, uh, early next year.

Um, you know, so you hired me at postman to work on Jason schema for full time. And that was great. Um, I really did enjoy it, but I find that I found that my passion for the project diminished. Um, it was a, uh, it was a passion project. It’s something that I did on the side, uh, and then it became my job. And, um, as so many people have found, I’ve seen a lot of like woodworking YouTubers who have [00:17:00] said, you know, this is my passion. I’m going to make it my job on YouTube and blah, blah, blah. And, uh, that was, and then, and then eventually they, Kind of burn out on it. And, um, I was starting to experience that stuff as well. So I think, uh, in the end, postman pulling back their sponsorship of, of the individuals behind Jason schema ended up being actually a really good thing for me because, um, I took some time off of it. Found a job and, um, I found that, uh, the, the passion that I had before with, uh, with editing and writing the specification and, um, helping the community understand what we’re trying to do and, and, uh, work with it and everything. And now that. Now that it’s something that I do when I want to do it, I find myself actually wanting to do it more.