API! API! API! 👏

If you’ve been working in software long enough, you probably understand Steve Ballmer’s enthusiasm. 😄

APIs are everywhere.

Mobile applications communicate with backend services through APIs. Websites retrieve and modify data through APIs. Enterprise systems exchange information through APIs. Cloud platforms expose almost everything through APIs, and even physical devices increasingly provide APIs for integration and automation.

The graphical interface may be what the user sees, but in many systems, the real work happens underneath it.

I started testing APIs around 2008. Almost two decades later, the technologies have changed enormously, but many of the problems haven’t.

Unexpected inputs. Incorrect access decisions. Broken HTTP semantics. Server errors. And, of course, the legendary 200 OK when absolutely nothing is OK.

In 2017, Dylan Beattie even turned these frustrations into a brilliant parody of Bon Jovi’s You Give Love a Bad Name, called You Give REST a Bad Name.

Some API problems are apparently timeless. 😄

And that’s exactly why we build https://rentgen.io

API! API! API! 👏