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I think this is neat having looked at the examples but isn't the title really just a game of semantics? Non rigorously a web API is just the boundary across so

I think this is neat having looked at the examples but isn't the title really just a game of semantics? Non rigorously a web API is just the boundary across some service which you communicate with over (commonly) HTTP at the endpoints specified at that boundary by developers. I could write my own library that wraps those endpoints with functions that make the calls to them, in fact many libraries do just that. What this takes care of, again kind of nicely, is dynamically and automatically generating that boiler plate as you write your API so you don't have to put in the work, but I think saying this isn't just a style of building an API is a little much. Whether you're doing RPC, REST or whatever the boundary between your service and another service is it's API.

jrumbut 4y ago
Remote functions instead of data interchange doesn't have the same ring. Though I would say that RPC blurs a lot of lines. REST is clearly a way for two programs to communicate. RPC could be seen as a way for two programs to become one distributed program by means of location transparency. Shared objects and other systems take that a lot further, RPC is in a middle ground that is very interesting but also a little scary. Reading this description I couldn't tell you exactly what the security implications are. With their TODO list app as written, can a malicious user execute arbitrary SQL (within the permissions assigned to their user) on the server? It wasn't immediately clear to me (I'm sure a little more effort on my part could clear it up).
brillout 4y ago
See my reply here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33054110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33054110