I reckon, if you are creating a simple, one page personal website, designing an API may not apply to your project. In this case you would be more likely to consume them (twitter feed, facebook likes, recent github activity, etc.) than to publish your own, but you would be using them anyways.
In today's connected web, a very broad range of applications worth developing (or rewriting) would benefit from publishing an API for consumption by third parties.
For a long time, software has been moving away from its monolithic: one-package-does-it-all origin, and with each new step, new challenges have risen, have been addressed and solved, sometimes in elegant ways, sometimes not so much.
But now, at the end of 2014, software applications can be written to take advantage of a number of technologies that allow us programmers to deliver a fully functioning, distributed and completely decoupled solution, which relies on APIs across the board to bind the desired functionality, saving a lot of time and money in the process.
So, if you are thinking of your next killer application or even rewriting a legacy one to cope with current times, do yourself a favor, think API-First, you'll be glad you did.
SUN Microsystems' slogan was: The Network is the Computer. SUN's slogan was way ahead of their own time, It is just too bad that they did not live long enough to see it become a great and inclusive reality.
SUN Microsystems is [nowadays] a registered trademark of ORACLE CORPORATION, all rights reserved.
 | |
| Entrance to the Muelle Norte (North Pier) at the Santa Cruz de Tenerife Seaport |
Photo Credit: Paulo Márquez Herrero
