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Counterpoint: I did this and it worked out great. We ended up wanting to support direct API access from our customers and we were already in a good place to do
by theptip 3y ago
Counterpoint: I did this and it worked out great. We ended up wanting to support direct API access from our customers and we were already in a good place to do so.
YMMV. An observation I have is that really flexible APIs make it easy for the frontend to make small changes, instead of needing to coordinate with backend changes. On the other hand this can lead to maintenance problems down the road as it’s hard to control exactly what data/state your system can transition to.
I view this as one of the best pieces of tech debt to take on in an early-stage startup, basically keeping your options open and minimizing short-term friction, at the expense of taking on a bit more cleanup after you find PMF and start to make your backend more robust for the usecase you are scaling.
- Attummm 3y agoEngineering is about tradeoffs, everything has its place. But it would it be good standard? How would we look at that api when: New frontend is needed? Other team/company would like to acces the data? When we other clients for example anderiod/ios app? Wouldn't a generic api, with some custom api calls. Ensure that we are more consistent, and require less maintenance in the future. That way we could focus on adding business value, or solving those hard problems, we normally don't have time for.