Arguing with an API
I’ve been writing a program to integrate with the Google adwords API recently. That’s a computer thing which means an Application Programming Interface.
Simply put it means that someone else’s big, fat computer system (for example eBay or flickr) allows me to converse with it programmatically and ask it to do stuff for me.
Fascinating eh? Why would I bother doing that? Well…. Sometimes the only way to deal with a system like eBay is through their website. If for some reason you wanted to make 3000 eBay listings (which people often do), it’ll take you weeks to go through all the screens and create them all manually, so sometimes it saves time and effort to write a computer program to do it for you. That’s what computers are there for after all.
So communicating with an API can be quite fiddly. Obviously all the requests have to be made in a very precise, and not always intuitive way. But the bit that made me start thinking last night was that it’s a little bit like trying to have a conversation with someone who is completely not on your wavelength. Someone French who works in a bank for instance. Some conversations seem to go a little like this:
Me: Could you please do this for me? Here is all the information you will need to do it.
The API: Non.
Me: Um…. please?
The API: Non.
Me: Have I forgotten to give you an important piece of information?
The API: Oui
Me: Could you tell me what that is?
The API: Non
Me: You’re winding me up now
The API: Boff. I don’t care. You numpty.
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