API Developer Weekly – October 6, 2016 – Issue #131
A hand-curated weekly newsletter for API developers, published with permission from LaunchAny and CaseySoftware.
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Hot Topics
The Role of An API Designer
APIs are everywhere, and enterprises want in on the action. Senior executives at various medium-to-large companies have been sold on the value that great APIs can bring – both for internal and external uses – and have started setting up Enterprise API Programs to support these efforts. by Dave Goldberg [medium.com]
An Open API Initiative Update
The Open API Initiative group is evolving what has become the de-facto standard API Description Format to produce a consistent and compatible format for describing APIs, allowing interoperation between tooling, systems, and runtime environments. Tony Tam, creator of the popular Swagger Specification is providing an update on the group activity. [infoq.com]
Open Source – breaking down barriers to API Management
Tyk are engineers not consultants – we wouldn’t know a powerpoint transition if it gave us a wedgie and told us to “run a change programme up the flagpole and see who salutes”. So to explain why Open Source API Management software is important to enterprise and your business, we defer to an expert in … by Andrew Murray [tyk.io]
Apps that send packages with the Shippo API
Shippo is an API that allows you to connect to multiple shipping carriers from one place to compare shipping rates, buy labels, and track packages. We power shipping for businesses. Shipping is really hard. There are thousands of carriers around the world, each offering a variety of service levels. by Gordon Wintrob [getputpost.co]
API SDKs Getting More Specialized
I’m considering how APIs can deliver the skills needed for the next generation of apps beyond just a mobile phone. I kicked off my SDK research over a year ago, where I track on the approaches of leading platforms who are offering up code samples, libraries, and SDKs in a variety of programming languages. [apievangelist.com]
Understanding REST And RPC For HTTP APIs
For the last few years, whenever somebody wants to start building an HTTP API, they pretty much exclusively use REST as the go-to architectural style, over alternative approaches such as XML-RPC, SOAP and JSON-RPC. REST is made out by many to be ultimately superior to the other “RPC-based” approaches, which is a bit misleading because they are just different. by Phil Sturgeon [smashingmagazine.com]
The Microservices Paradox
On Sept. 12, I had the privilege of participating in a panel discussion at API World on the topic of microservices. When I first got the invitation to be a panel member, I was ambivalent — to me, a discussion about microservices is bound to head into the same murky swamp that discussions about DevOps and Agile do. There seems to be a general understanding of all those concepts but no science around how to implement and sustain them. [developer.capitalone.com]
Key Improvements for Your API Experience
Posted by Israel Shalom, Product Manager Here at Google, we’re serving more than a hundred APIs to ensure that developers have the resources to build amazing experiences with them. We provide a reliable infrastructure and make it as simple as possible so developers can focus on building the future. [developers.googleblog.com]
APIStrat Boston 2016 – Nov 2-4
APIStrat Boston – under the direction of our 2016 Program Chair Lorinda Brandon – is already shaping up to be our best program ever. Our three days of workshops, keynotes, fireside chats and speaker sessions 2016 reflect the maturity and diversity of the API business and community today. The preliminary schedule has been announced. [boston2016.apistrat.com]
Upcoming Web API Events
A list of upcoming Web API Events, maintained by Matthew Reinbold
The Business of APIs
Turning APIs into Products: The Next Stage of Business Growth
Often, businesses initially look to creating APIs as a way to expose some data set or business service to a partner or third party provider so as to test the waters of new business models. This usually occurs after a process of microservices reorientation, where internal systems have been re-architected into API-facing composable services in … by Mark Boyd, TC Currie, Jennifer Riggins [thenewstack.io]
Box Introduces Four New Security and Governance APIs
The content management company Box recently announced the arrival of four security and governance APIs. These APIs are aimed at helping companies handle legal, security, and compliance needs better. Three of these APIs: the Retention Policy API, the Legal Hold Policy API, and the Folder Metadata API, have already been released, although the Folder Metadata API is in beta. [infoq.com]
In Praise of Open APIs
APIs provide the building blocks that make it easy for applications to talk to each other. As the use of APIs has become mainstream, the industry is seeing a movement toward open APIs. An open approach enables efficient development of all the online services we now take for granted. by VMware Staff [vmware.com]
Why to Prioritize Your API Strategy Before Your API Design
The API has always been central to SendGrid even going back to the company’s original name, SMTPAPI. My career at SendGrid has always revolved around our API in some way, whether as Evangelist, or technical writer, or interim product manager. I’ve learned one major unexpected lesson during this [programmableweb.com]
APIs Can Give An Honest View Of What A Company Does
One of the reasons I enjoy profiling APIs is that they give an honest view of what a company does, absent of all the marketing fluff, and the promises that I see from each wave of startups. If designed right, APIs can provide a very functional, distilled down representation of data, content, and algorithmic resources of any company. [apievangelist.com]
(Un)Related Topics
Keeping Systems “Poised for Change” with Evolutionary Architecture
At the Agile on the Beach 2016 conference, held in Cornwall, UK, Rebecca Parsons argued that the requirements for improved time-to-market and increased business agility can be achieved by architecting software for real evolvability, keeping systems poised for change, lowering the cost (and risk) of experimentation, maximising visibility and feedback, and aligning the organisation. [infoq.com]
How to Get Started With Amazon’s Alexa Skills Kit
We are currently at an intersection where the devices that we will work with will not necessary have an interface or buttons to click. One of the natural ways that we can interact with these devices is via voice. [programmableweb.com]
One-Button Everything in AWS
There’s an approach that we seek at Stelligent known informally as “One-Button Everything”. At times, it can be an elusive goal but it’s something that we often aim to achieve on behalf of our customers. The idea is that we want to be able to create the complete, functioning software system by clicking a single button. by Paul Duvall [stelligent.com]
Facebook, Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft come together to create the Partnership on AI
The world’s largest technology companies hold the keys to some of the largest databases on our planet. Much like goods and coins before it, data is becoming an important currency for the modern world. The data’s value is rooted in its applications to artificial intelligence. Whichever company owns the data, effectively owns AI. by John Mannes [techcrunch.com]
How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016
The following is inspired by the article “It’s the future” from Circle CI. You can read the original. This piece is just an opinion, and like any JavaScript framework, it shouldn’t be taken too seriously. by Jose Aguinaga [hackernoon.com]
A Commodore 64 Is Still Being Used to Run an Auto Shop in Poland
This Commodore 64 used by a small auto repair shop for balancing driveshafts has been working non-stop for 25 years. [gizmodo.com]
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