The Last Line of Code, Your API is Never Finished
summary
Claim: an API is never finished because the last line of code lives in users’ apps, so shipping a REST endpoint alone fails to hide protocol quirks. Uses Twilio examples and curl/Ruby snippets to show messy encoding and error handling, counts 88 HTTP status codes to justify brittle client code, and reports six official SDKs (Java, C#, Python, Ruby, PHP, Node) plus community libs. Recommends open-source helper libraries, language‑idiomatic APIs, full surface coverage, and tests; launch of MMS forces immediate SDK updates.
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chapters (19)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:32What is an API
- 2:25The problem with APIs
- 3:23Encoding
- 3:45Alignment
- 4:28Coding Details
- 7:03Data Problem
- 8:06Building Helper Libraries
- 9:03S swish
- 9:58Toys R Us
- 11:24How do you decide what your customers are using
- 12:20Know your users
- 12:48The downside
- 15:44The surface area
- 16:51Keeping up to date
- 17:37Tests
- 19:02The Last Line of Code
- 19:25Users are always making new apps
- 19:41Your API is never finished
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