Comments on: Beat the Economic Heat: Use Cool APIs http://www.npost.com/blog/2008/12/23/beat-the-economic-heat-use-cool-apis/ Connecting Startups with Talent Since 1999 Fri, 27 May 2011 04:20:51 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Adam Loving http://www.npost.com/blog/2008/12/23/beat-the-economic-heat-use-cool-apis/#comment-238 Adam Loving Tue, 23 Dec 2008 22:39:49 +0000 http://blog.npost.com/?p=1469#comment-238 Hi Ike! Good idea for a post. It is interesting, because in the last two years I've transitioned from a Microsoft "distributed" developer, to an open source "mashup" developer. Pretty much all the work I do is aggregating data from different sources, or writing Web apps on top of a platform (like Facebook). This is both discouraging and empowering. It is discouraging because it is increasingly harder to establish yourself as the definitive source for a given data asset. It is encouraging because we can focus on synthesizing interesting remixes of data and inventing new user interactions. I was very excited about SOAP and the era of Web Services announced by Microsoft around 2002 or so. However, it has been simpler API protocols (like REST) that have been necessary for the real promise of Web Services to come to fruition (consumer data on public APIs). My point is that Microsoft has a history of over-engineering. Hi Ike! Good idea for a post. It is interesting, because in the last two years I’ve transitioned from a Microsoft “distributed” developer, to an open source “mashup” developer. Pretty much all the work I do is aggregating data from different sources, or writing Web apps on top of a platform (like Facebook).

This is both discouraging and empowering. It is discouraging because it is increasingly harder to establish yourself as the definitive source for a given data asset. It is encouraging because we can focus on synthesizing interesting remixes of data and inventing new user interactions.

I was very excited about SOAP and the era of Web Services announced by Microsoft around 2002 or so. However, it has been simpler API protocols (like REST) that have been necessary for the real promise of Web Services to come to fruition (consumer data on public APIs). My point is that Microsoft has a history of over-engineering.

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