#api-craft thoughts

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15:21 ghchinoy
I'm pretty psyched about where the api landscape is going, btw
15:21 ghchinoy
It's interesting, though, that sdks are effectively making a comeback
15:22 sramji
Yeah, maybe inevitable
15:22 ghchinoy
In a way, it's more organic than the violent proxying that WSDLs made for SOAP services, too.
15:22 sramji
:D I love that phrase "violent proxying"
15:22 sramji
Can I use that (with attribution to you)?
15:22 ghchinoy
IMO, once WSDLs became standard, people forgot about what it took to craft an api.
15:22 ghchinoy
Absolutely.
15:23 sramji
The biggest worry I have about the SDK phase is the Obj-C crowd
15:23 ghchinoy
WSDLs made people slaves to autogenerated proxies. If the SDKs on top of apis are done well, it'll be much more in tune with the providers intent, don't you think?
15:23 ghchinoy
Orly.
15:23 sramji
the quantity of cut-and-paste/file inheritance will cause real maintenance problems
15:23 ghchinoy
Why's that?
15:23 ghchinoy
Ah
15:23 sramji
which will cause cascading issues backwards towards the API providers
15:24 ghchinoy
That's a good point and with the "app generators" like Appcelerator, etc.
15:24 sramji
versions really will have to be maintained forever
15:24 ghchinoy
Yeah, very true. Same issue with WSDLs.
15:24 ghchinoy
and their proxies.
15:24 sramji
your point on WSDL is great - moreover it made them slaves to Visual Studio or Eclipse
15:24 ghchinoy
nods.
15:24 sramji
what's fascinating to me is the explosion of text editors as the ide of choice for young developers
15:25 ghchinoy
SublimeText2 ftw :)
15:25 ghchinoy
Now if I could just do Android development in it...
15:25 sramji
that becomes, in my mind, the new common denominator we have to target as API providers.
15:25 sramji
right!
15:25 sramji
EMACS is making a comeback, people are talking about VIM again
15:25 sramji
it's like back to the future
15:25 ghchinoy
full disclosure: I don't do iOS apps :( Don't have a Mac, otherwise I probably would.
15:25 ghchinoy
VIM
15:25 sramji
yeah, really!
15:25 ghchinoy
Yeah, that's what REST has done, made people go back to the basics.
15:25 sramji
can you believe it?
15:26 sramji
which is awesome
15:26 ghchinoy
I'm surprised, but not shocked.
15:26 sramji
the bare metal is power
15:26 ghchinoy
Yes, I think it's fantastic.
15:27 sramji
also, I'll reply to the API Craft thread you where you asked about SOAPUI
15:27 sramji
We are using a few tools which I'll post about