I worked on the API and SDKs at Stripe alongside Brandur, and honestly I was a little surprised to see him say that too. I also think the underlying API has to

I worked on the API and SDKs at Stripe alongside Brandur, and honestly I was a little surprised to see him say that too. I also think the underlying API has to be good for the overall DX to be good, even if these days most devs want static types and thus SDKs for any nontrivial API. (Thanks for the kind words on the Stripe Node.js SDK btw - I do hope the world can standardize more around good SDK design patterns, just as with good REST design patterns!)