Developers Struggle with API Development Friction
Developers are frustrated by the complexity, verbosity, and collaboration challenges inherent in modern API development workflows. Existing tools feel bloated, inflexible, or lack essential features, leading to workarounds and custom solutions to bridge the gap between frontend and backend. The pain is compounded by legacy systems and the need for manual synchronization across different technologies.
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“We've started a new practice at work where every 'entity' that's owned by a service gets defined in a certain repo/library as a protobuf file, so that other services can use them, regardless of the service's language The library also defines the GET/POST endpoints used…”
I've lost count of how many mockData.js files I've written and then deleted. Every project, same ritual: backend isn't ready, so I fake 3 records, build against them, and then everything breaks…
Hi all, I noticed that over time YAML support is dropped more and more in favor of GUI only. Previous examples are e.g. Ping integration, latest is SMTP (see below screenshot). For…
“I was building my personal agent, but I had to use Telegram, as it was the easiest platform to integrate. I wanted to build the harness and agent, not the infrastructure around these two, yet my UX was struggling. I stick to iMessage, and then I had to use another app to interact with my agent...So I spent a weekend on building a TypeScript SDK, that unifies how to interact with different iMessage providers (as there is no official way to use iMessage), so you can play around with them, without”
“Finally! This will help with replacing Stocky. They should extend the deprecation to give users more time to migrate”
N8N102 Section 1 Hands-on Exercise: Building an API Integration Pipeline - FinalizePipeline 持續回傳「Progress incompleted」
“The problem with these type of new / transcompile languages is not the langue, its the lacking libraries and 3th party assets. Great if just want the most basic hello world programs, but the moment you need ... for example a http server. Then your often with:a) noneb) http 1.1c) ... forget about moreMaybe you need rar support ... O well, ... And then you always enter the world where you need to start linking external libs, and then your mixing not just the base language and the transcompile but”
“Typically this would be handled by token scopes. Presumably these extensions will be authenticating their requests, such as OAuth2 ... The subsequent bearer token, specifically for those connected extentensions should have a particular 'token scope' ... At the point of performing each action, when the controller determines whether the requesting party has permission to perform an action, check that tokens with that scope are allowed to do so.”
Interesting. I will look into this method more. Thank you for the advice
“Is there a way to create a sandbox in the browser will also providing a base API from my app for the extension to use?”
“I want to get some insights if my thought process is missing something. So lets say i have some inhouse developed APIs, and they work fine and all, but we dont have an officially released MCP for our service yet. Using FastMCP i could literally build a locally hosted MCP server as a wrapper around the API, and was able to query and use it with my locally hosted LLM tool. Used different models, all were able to run the API via my MCP. So... anything wrong with the statement "As long as I hav”
“Vue frontend with a .NET backend, you can use the minimal apis also for even leaner code. Vuetify for the UI library if you dont already have one cause its so easy to setup and use straight away”
“I personally use Python (FastAPI) + postgresSQL + Docker for my backend stack. I try cursor, zcode and even antigravity but couldn't get along with them. So if you have years of experience with vs code you probably should stick with it. But if you insist in new playground I could suggest cursor. I use deepseek API but if you haven't budget problem Claude sonnet is the best, don't even think. As terminal agents I work with Hermes and Opencode but if you use cursor you won't need t”
“Glad it helped! You're thinking about it the right way. The abstraction layer buys you the upgrade path without the day-one cost, and honestly most "we should've build middleware" regrets come from messy data, not the sync method. Keep the SKUs tidy and you're in great shape.”
“I spent some time searching for front-ends to no avail, i need a front end that can: Web-search Web-crawl Accepts images Accepts PDF Runs fully local Docker Something similar to Claude or Unsloth Studio, but i want to plug my own model. there are also optional stuff that is a nice have: Arm64 images Voice Input Cross-chat Memory Compaction I tried open-webUI, Unsloth studio, (the best for now but i cannot run it in ARM nor i can use custom models outside in any PC that i want.) Sillytavern, i tr”
“Thanks for testing here it is FetchSandbox provides runnable, stateful API sandboxes that let developers and AI agents verify complete integration lifecycles before shipping. Instead of static mocks, it reproduces real API behavior—webhooks, retries, state transitions, async workflows, and failure scenarios—so you can reproduce bugs, prove the fix, and avoid production incidents. It integrates directly with Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, VS Code, and other MCP-compatible tools, with support for 60+”
“If your application relies heavily on third-party APIs (like Stripe for payments, Twilio for SMS, or OpenAI for AI features), a slow response from their side can completely freeze your entire backend loop. When their API lags, your server connections queue up, run out of memory, and eventually crash—even if your database is perfectly fine. Here is the lightweight pattern I use in NestJS/Node.js to protect the architecture: The Circuit Breaker: Wrap external API calls in a breaker mechanism. If t”
“During setup you select custom openai compatible and you put your IP and port in the window. Is that not working?”
“I don't get it, what's the difference with using let's say vscode and its remote ssh extension? Being able to use it on a phone?”
Finally, a proper way to ask for data without side effects!
“GitHub: https://github.com/h0p3sf4ll/application-inventory-service PyPi: https://pypi.org/project/application-inventory-service/#description From Source Code to an Actionable Application Inventory Security programs cannot protect applications they cannot identify. In a large organization, the challenge is not producing another repository list. It is determining which repositories contain deployable applications, which branches matter, who owns the work, where those applications run, and how each”
“I would add well-defined APIs and contracts, these prevent a surprising number of runtime issues, even in dynamically typed backends.”
“Honestly I lean hard toward strongly typed backends. The compile time guarantees are a big part of how I stay confident shipping to prod and every time I have to touch a dynamically typed codebase I feel like I'm working without a safety net. There are whole classes of bugs that Rust or Java would just reject upfront end up waiting to blow up at runtime. But plenty of people build stuff on dynamic languages every day, so clearly there's an edge or something I don't catch entirely. Fo”
“Hello everyone. Im reading a book "System design interview" by Alex Xu. And i came across a thing called "API server". I tried googling what it really means, but it seems that no one really knows it. You end up with explanations that are basically "Idk bro just trust me bro stop asking". This is how I understand stuff works: https://imgur.com/13N4ZuY A couple of questions: How is my server called then? Is it "API server"? Is it "APP server"? &quo”
“i want to create something around JSON and work is in progress i want to solve the real problems because i found JSON is every where from API TO AI, but there is no any tool exist which have all the solution of JSON some only format it and some check the syntax but what about JSON Health Score, how to hide Sensitive data while sharing it ( manually, is a nice joke) , what if i want to create Documentation of that JSON these all are the small problem but need onestop solution what i believe . So,”
“Offloading fan-out work to Render Workflows (docs linked above). Retries and parallel tasks live there. My problem is the web layer. First version: return 202, tasks POST back to /internal/events with a bearer token, UI subscribes over SSE. Added a reconciler that polls the Render API every 2s anyway because I didn't trust callbacks alone. Second version: skip callbacks entirely. One POST stays open, poll getTaskRun every 1.5s in an async generator, stream SSE until the digest finishes. Post”
“Hey all, I'm running into an architecture decision and want some real-world input before I commit. Setup: I have 40+ React apps that I'm treating as individual microservices — each one needs to run in its own isolated environment (separate dependencies, separate runtime context, no bleed-over between apps). I have one server with decent specs to run all of this. The core tension: If I containerize each app individually with Docker, that's 40+ separate containers, each with i”
“Yes, all four of those are feasible with APIs, and the first project is by far the best place to start. Treat it as a small integration service rather than one huge automation. The basic flow is: receive an event from Jobber (or poll its API), fetch the receipt data and attachment, apply your mapping rules in code, then call the QuickBooks API to create the expense and upload the attachment. Those "if accounting code = gas and employee = A then use account X" rules are exactly the kind”
“Go with Headless channel it'll be easier to set up and maintain (especially if you don't need admin API acccess)”
“Building a social platform, and the web app is a react web app, for some reason I will sometimes get stalled requests, loads that hang, etc. Basically things aren't as responsive as id like. I have implemented a connection warmer that every request runs through, tanstack query, prefetching on hover, many things like that and try to have an efficient and effective cache. What other things do you guys do to make web apps as responsive as possible, thanks! Edit- Some info about the app, it’s a”
“To preface this, this is my first project. I am using this project as a goal in order to learn the skills along the way. I am having difficulty nailing down exactly how to go about this, and what information would be most helpful learning how to do this. I would appreciate any help on understanding the projects I want to undertake, and what knowledge or skills underly this. I'm currently going through the beginner course information, but at this stage it's difficult to parse what informa”
“Hey. Your JSON formatter works incorrectly. Try to format larger integer, like {"id": 12345678901234567890}, and see results: { "id": 12345678901234567000 }. Also, are "Markdown Table Generator" and "Markdown Table Builder" actually same tool?”
“I'm an Implementation Manager and I'm looking for clarification regarding the difference between a webhook and a PUSH API. Is "webhook" just just another name for a PUSH API, or are they two different things? If a webhook is different from a PUSH API, how are they different and why would you decide to use one of or the other? submitted by /u/LurkingandPosting [link] [comments]”
“I think it would be really cool if you used a no memory platform like openrouter to ask GPT 5.5 if it had to build a tool without any guidance, what tool would it build? Do that like 20 times, and see if it lands on a pattern. And then see if this experiment lands on one of them. Assuming it's not a different response every time, there has to be some kind of rhyme or reason behind what it decides. Either some average of the most common problems that exists to address common pain points?”
“Hi all, I am looking for a self-hosted coding stack (python, data science, etc) that has some automation tools built in. I've tried tools like codeserver, jenkins, etc and wasted a lot of time when they didn't have the features I needed or were insanely complex. Now I'm looking at something like prefect, but I want to make sure it is a robust solution before wasting more time. Unfortunately, when you look for these kinds of things now, only AI-related tools pop up, even if you say -&”
“I'm thinking about building an open-source project in Go and would like to validate the idea before investing a lot of time into it. The idea is a self-hosted GitHub notification platform. Instead of sending plain webhook messages, it would transform GitHub events (Pull Requests, Pushes, Releases, etc.) into clean, readable notifications for Telegram, Discord, Slack and other platforms. Some features I'm considering: - Self-hosted (Docker / Docker Compose) - GitHub Webhooks - GitHub App”
“Laravel. If you need reactivity Laravel Livewire or Vue.js / Svelte / React in combination with Inertia.js. Super solid framework with loots of great tools out of the box (auth, scheduler, queue, orm, oauth, websockets, payment integration) and if you want to use AI agents, Laravel Boost helps the agent to understand the framework and write acceptable code. the ecosystem with great packages by vendors like Spatie.”
“The "modern" stack hasn't changed as much as people think. TypeScript, React, Tailwind, and a relational database still cover most projects really well.”
“I trying to learn as much as possible for my SAAS startup. I was focused on frontend only, Now I realized backend and database is much more imp than that. I came across some apps like superbase and firebase and wanted to know which one works best and if I set up any of these would they able to handle my complete backend or I have to use some others things as well. As of now if they cover my MVP that would be enough for me, later on we can scale and build a proper in house backend. I would love t”
“Yeaaaah, hate to be a naysayer here BUT what about middleware, these global distributions could possibly take years to upgrade if we're lucky and let me not even start with the Caching hell this will create. I'll stick to POST for the next 6 years specifically for complex queries. Look, Its a good fix but the vendors will take a decade to weed themselves out of breaking things AND we'll literally be docked by some firewall that still thinks QUERY is a SQL injection attack. End Rant”
“when we create a simple blog post app or newsletter or supposedly conside simple chat which continously getting users how we actually scale it the DB the backend apis registrations logins storage deployment ngnix , docker kubernetics etc submitted by /u/Beginning_Fill6201 [link] [comments]”
“I write integration tests for the contracts that matter and skip manually testing every edge case. The maintenance pain comes from handcrafting fixtures. Generate them from real responses instead. Focus on contract level testing over individual endpoint checks.”
“I normally build in Ruby on Rails which make tests a first class citizen, including for requests. What language / framework are you building in?”
“i got tired of the whole “just let agents call your API” thing sounding simple but being annoying once you actually try to do it. everyone shows the happy path, but then you hit the boring stuff: auth, API keys, deciding which endpoints are safe, huge JSON responses, logs, rate limits, and not letting the model see half your backend for no reason. so i built a rough gateway/proxy layer. basically: agent → gateway → real API it’s not exactly MCP. it’s more like a curated agent-facing layer in fro”
“I really like hurl. It’s basically a CLI version of Postman that lets you write your API assertions/test cases in nice declarative code. I like it so much that I wrote custom test fixture where I just point it to my HURL files and use those as e2e live api test suites. This was using pytest but I’m sure the same can be done using Vitest’s fixture APIs”
“Hi everyone. I always find myself spending hours manually constructing test cases + i have to maintain them constantly when i make changes to the backend. What is your normal flow for creating api test? Do you write them manually or give it to ai? Do you even find api testing valuable? submitted by /u/eeeeeehhhhhhh [link] [comments]”
“The whole reason it's too risky to add it officially to GET is precisely because it was never officially part of it and many systems run as if it doesn't exist. If it was trivial it would've been implemented as part of GET. It's the obvious choice. As for your systems, I was specifically talking about all the HTML CSS and js code that's been around and working fine for decades. The reason it's working just fine is because people are careful not to break it while still upd”
“It shouldn't be too hard for large companies. Kubernetes powers everything and it is incredibly demanding with updates, where the oldest supported versions of core plugins is less than a year. So once those plugins implement it, which should be fast, it's not going to be long before it is deployed.”
“genuine question i only work with springboot in backend , how long do u think it will take for this new method to be in deplooyed and ppl start workign with ?”
“GET I’m sure will always continue to be the default and the “page verb” so it’ll never go away completely. For a lot of API usage though I definitely see most non-crud going to QUERY”
“Adding a new feature doesn't change the behavior of software that can only use older features. Changing the behavior of an existing feature breaks old software which depends on the prior behavior. Most of the internet is built on the idea that there are things without much money maintaining them, they're worth preserving, so you shouldn't remove or change any established features unless it's a huge security risk to leave them as-is.”
“You're assuming it will be widely adopted at all, which is never the case with legacy systems. So yes I agree that new projects will tend to use GET less and less but it'll likely still be the most used HTTP verb on the internet”
“The difference is that older software doesn't know what QUERY is, so it fails predictably (unrecognized method, easy to detect and fall back). It's the difference between a vending machine rejecting a foreign coin outright vs. accepting a slightly bent coin that jams the mechanism later.”
“It could still be graphql I think? It's just a body, doesn't really matter what the contents are.”
“lol "without me doing anything" good luck with that, you'll still spend hours debugging whatever it spits out”
“We have been an AWS-only shop for a long time and have always used Terraform. We took on an Azure project a bit ago. Small, uncomplicated. I tried to use Bicep then eventually switched back to Terraform. It's fine. We now have a project coming in that wants to use Azure and is quite a bit more involved than the previous one. So I'm thinking about Bicep. I feel salty about using a vendor-specific IaC tool but also I remember running into a few issues with Terraform on the last Azure proje”
