APIs You Won't Hate

Harsha Reddy, a Senior Software Engineer on Internal API Platforms for Wayfair, joins Matt and Phil to talk about what its like to build tools for developers that use a myriad of languages from PHP to C# to Python and some Java thrown in for a good time. We discuss how Wayfair empowers their developers to pick the right language for a job and then what kind of tools they employ to make their day to day lives at Wayfair easier.

Sponsors:
Stoplight makes it possible for us to bring you this podcast while we nerd out about APIs. Check them out for their tooling around documentation with Studio, an app that makes API documentation an absolute joy to work with.

Links:

• https://pactflow.io
• https://eng.uber.com/microservice-architecture/
• https://buildkite.com
• Harsha on Twitter: https://twitter.com/stymied_sloth

Phil, Mike and Matt get together before Phil leaves the UK in search of roads he can bike on. We talk about what is coming up for new Stoplight releases and then we take a sharp pivot to talk about mental health and how it affects Matt and what he is doing to take care of himself.

Sponsors:
Stoplight makes it possible for us to bring you this podcast while we nerd out about APIs. Check them out for their tooling around documentation with Studio, an app that makes API documentation an absolute joy to work with.

A quick note before we get started: We recorded this episode back in April of 2020 when everyone was quarantining and making bread to post on instagram. Fast forward to now, in June, American cities, and cities around the world are joining in, protesting the systemic racism that has long been an issue in our societies. While our energy and focus turned to current events, editing this episode took a seat on the backburner. That said, we have it ready... but it couldn’t be released at a worse time. Three white dudes talking about APIs while our friends in other communities are fighting injustices that have long kept them down seems to be a bit tone deaf, and we know that, recognize that and commit ourselves to being involved. There are a lot of conversations we want to have around this topic both in the API world, and outside of it. We don’t want this episode to take away from the discussions going on around such important and heavy topics, but we hope this can serve as a way for you to take a break while you travel to and from a protest. If you are going to protest please be safe, drink as much water as you can to stay hydrated in the heat and know that things are changing for the better. To all the Black API developers out there: we see you, we're fighting with you, and we want you to know that we're listening. From all of us at APIs You Won't Hate: Black lives matter.

Recorded back in April, Matt and Phil are joined by Marc-Andre Giroux to talk about the APIs he works on at Github and his fascination of GraphQL. Marc-Andre recently released a book titled "Production Ready GraphQL" where he talks about schema design, tooling, architecture and more. We take a dive into knowing when GraphQL is the right tool for the job, versus when to use REST and talk a little about the whole quarantine thing that was happening.

Sponsors:
Stoplight makes it possible for us to bring you this podcast while we nerd out about APIs. Check them out for their tooling around documentation with Studio, an app that makes API documentation an absolute joy to work with.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/__xuorig__
Book: Production Ready GraphQL
APIs You Wont Hate Jobs Board: https://apisyouwonthate.com/jobs
APIs You Wont Hate Slack: https://apisyouwonthate.com/community

Phil and Matt, both in a loose definition of isolation, find time to talk to Arnaud Lauret (https://twitter.com/apihandyman) and talk about API Design and Review. We discuss why you should spend time designing and reviewing your API and the process of reviewing API Designs before the code is written. We also ask Arnaud what he looks for while reviewing, the tools he uses to review API design docs and then Phil starts dreaming up what the ideal API Review tooling looks like.

We also talk about life in quarantine, as France completely shut down and how Phil made it back in time to England before the lock downs took place.

Sponsors:
Stoplight makes it possible for us to bring you this podcast while we nerd out about APIs. Check them out for their tooling around documentation with Studio, an app that makes API documentation an absolute joy to work with.

Links:

https://twitter.com/apihandyman - Arnaud's Twitter
https://bit.ly/designwebapis - The Design of Web APIs by Arnaud Lauret
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things - The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
http://apihandyman.io/ - Arnaud's blog
http://apistylebook.com/ - API Stylebook, a collection of API style guides

Phil, Mike and Matt talk about Matt's adventures with APIs returning 200 OK while having an error message in the body, causing extra work and frustration. We look at why this is a common thing in API development and what we can do to help people utilize the codes that are there instead of relying on 200 OK.

Mike brings up Microsoft and what they are doing with their push to not only go Carbon Neutral but also Carbon Negative to make up for their past. We wonder what that will look like, and also bring up what an individual person with a developers salary can do to start helping out more since we (developers) can generally afford it over a lot of other people.

Keeping on the environment, we also take look at some things a developer can do with code to help the environment, particularly around caching and responses.

Sponsors:
Stoplight makes it possible for us to bring you this podcast while we nerd out about APIs. Check them out for their tooling around documentation with Studio, an app that makes API documentation an absolute joy to work with.

Cheers!