4 ms·
It's a real shame that this rant has made it to the number one spot (as I of now). I don't mind rants, but there's nothing to really take away from this post. T
by ocharles 14y ago
It's a real shame that this rant has made it to the number one spot (as I of now). I don't mind rants, but there's nothing to really take away from this post. The author doesn't provide any motivation as to why any of these things are problematic, nor does he try to appreciate why some of these exist for some APIs. Rather than offensively ranting at people providing you with data, usually at no cost, why not try and provide examples of good web service design? This post could have been a whole lot more insightful.
- tommorris 14y agoI didn't plan for it to get to the top of Hacker News. It's an off-the-cuff rant, basically a long tweet. I could write a long and detailed post about it, but this was written in the middle of hacking, while waiting for a long database query to run. I apologise for the lack of insight.
- buro9 14y agoIt's an extreme position, but such views are still valuable. I wouldn't advocate implementing an API to those bullet points, but it's certainly worth remembering when you are making an API that you aren't making it for you, the service provider. As nothing but a reminder of that, the post is valid. It's certainly why I upvoted it... not because I think it's deeply insightful, but that it's good to have the reminder that on the other side of an API is a developer who I might be frustrating and causing problems for.