Ep4: What are APIs? Not Tomato Paste.

Unless you have been living in a deserted?island or never accessed the internet, I can almost guarantee that you have interacted with an API before. So, what are APIs?

API stands for “Application Programming Interfaces”. The term might sound complicated but the concept is simple. Imagine you have a date to plan, you can either cook at home or go to a restaurant. Cooking will require groceries, recipes, setting up plates and later washing them. Essentially starting from scratch. However, in the restaurant, you are shielded from all these tasks. You place an order with the waiter, and in 30 minutes, the food is on the table. Going to the restaurant is like using an API.

APIs allow developers to access certain data or functionality without having to start from scratch. For example, Apple’s weather app utilizes the Weather Channel’s API to gather weather data without having to install their own temperature sensors. Another example is e-commerce. Instead of creating your own payment system, you can use PayPal or Stripe APIs to process credit card payments securely without reinventing the wheel. Almost all major services offer APIs that allow developers to connect through. Using the above analogy, they offer a waiter to take your request and deliver data back to you.

Every month it is estimated that 400 billion API calls are made. There are many examples of APIs even Chuck Norris has an API. Try it out here: https://api.chucknorris.io/jokes/random

If you are interested to see more API examples, you can browse the rapid api hub: https://rapidapi.com/hub