Ruben Verborgh – The lie of the API:

“Accessing the website is quite easy: you just go to the URL of an object to visit it. […] Now developers come in. It can’t be as easy as reusing this unique identifier, can it? Of course not, we first have to read the documentation. Here are the steps you need to take: 1. Request an API key. 2. Receive an e-mail with this key. 3. […]

You get what you ask for. I imagine that developers were approached with the question “can you build an API?” And this is what they did.

But the question was wrong. It should have been: “can you add machine access?” That’s what we actually wanted all along, and an API is not the Web way to do that.”