Designing the APIs that accidentally power businesses [Video]

Well-designed APIs, even those often-neglected internal APIs, make developers more productive and businesses more agile.

Credit: Studio Romantic / Shutterstock

In the last decade, every web application developer has become an API designer. But most organizations do not think of developers as API designers, nor do they think about APIs as a product of design — to the detriment of their developers’ productivity. With the rise of AI, there are more APIs than ever before, making this problem even worse.

In this article, I’ll talk about the often-neglected internal APIs that, more and more, accidentally power businesses and how organizations can get back on top of these APIs.

The (internal) APIs that accidentally power businesses

The APIs that often get attention are the APIsthat organizations have intentionally built their businesses on. These are APIs like the Stripe API, the Twilio API, and the Instagram API — APIs that are crucial to companies’ product and go-to-market strategies. These APIs start with well-reviewed designs and go through many iterations of polish, …