> An API-only method of getting data is elitist. Or, at the very least, exposes privilege. I think this goes for computing as a whole. We on HN are probably in

> An API-only method of getting data is elitist. Or, at the very least, exposes privilege. I think this goes for computing as a whole. We on HN are probably in the crowd of people who feel completely in control of our machines and are fully capable of harnessing its compute power for nearly any communication or processing task we can imagine. More is better if you're an expert so a lot of our tools and services end up being very complicated and granular. I think there are two dominant mindsets around how to respond to this problem: A) make services that abstract the technical complexity away from end-users or B) encourage users to become more technical or rely on a technical expert if necessary. The third option is to simplify functionality down to a clear and simple set of easily understandable interfaces which are explicitly extensible where needed. If every industry had a commitment to doing that, we'd soon end up with a very obvious set of interoperable services with a common communication protocol and the possibility of vendor agnostic tools and services. In fact, I think this was the dream for the web at one point. Maybe we could revisit those ideas.