Question for Kin: Out of all the public-facing APIs that you’ve used, which one would you call your favorite (in terms of ease-of-use, extensiveness etc.), and why?
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Hands down the Twitter API. Not because it is the best designed API out there, but because it captures the essence of API success (which isn’t always good).
Programming against the Twitter API is fairly intuitive, and easy to understand for most developers, and even power users. Your first API call can almost always have a meaningful impact in your real world. You can build web or mobile applications, conduct research and data science. You can automate with Zapier and other services. You can build a bot, or army of bots. There are endless ways to use the Twitter API, making it a great place to start your API journey, and continue it with some complex work.
I love / hate the Twitter API. Honestly, I feel the same way about the Twitter API as I feel about APIs in general. They can do some really interesting things. They can be powerful. They can also be used for some really lame and damaging things. The Twitter API reflects the complexity of doing APIs, doing them well, and doing them at scale. Endless lessons within that API community.
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