The API makes the “DOWNLOAD” button possible. When building a backend, I lived through the age of custom exporters. It sucked. Having an API and the providing

The API makes the “DOWNLOAD” button possible. When building a backend, I lived through the age of custom exporters. It sucked. Having an API and the providing helper calls to do stuff like download the recent month in CSV is way better. I like having an API that both the UI and users who want to directly integrate use as it’s just simpler. The lesson may be that just having an API is not enough unless you have a big community or ecosystem building on it (eg, AWS).