Just Waiting The GraphQL Assault Out

I was reading a story on GraphQL this weekend which I won’t be linking to or citing because that is what they want, and they do not deserve the attention, that was just (yet) another hating on REST post. As I’ve mentioned before, the GraphQL’s primary strength seems to be they have endless waves of bros who love to write blog posts hating on REST, and web APIs. This particular post shows it’s absurdity by stating that HTTP is just a bad idea, wait…uh what? Yeah, you know that thing we use for the entire web, apparently it’s just not a good idea when it comes to exchanging data. Ok, buddy.

When it comes to GraphQL, I’m still watching, learning, and will continue evaluating it as a tool in my API toolbox, but when it comes to the argument of GraphQL vs. Web APIs I will just be waiting out the current assault as I did with all the other haters. The link data haters ran out of steam. The hypermedia haters ran out of steam. The GraphQL haters will also run out steam. All of these technologies are viable tools in our API toolbox, but NONE of them are THE solution. These assaults on “what came before” is just a very tired tactic in the toolbox of startups–you hire young men, give them some cash (which doesn’t last for long), get them all wound up, and let them loose talking trash on the space, selling your warez.

GraphQL has many uses. It is not a replacement for web APIs. It is just one tool in our toolbox. If you are following the advice of any of these web API haters you will wake up in a couple of years with a significant amount of technical debt, and probably also be very busy chasing the next wave of technology be pushed by vendors. My advice is that all API providers learn about the web, gain several years of experience developing web APIs, learn about linked data, hypermedia, GraphQL, and even gRPC if you have some high performance, high volume needs. Don’t spend much time listening to the haters, as they really don’t deserve your attention. Eventually they will go away, find another job, and technological kool-aid to drink.

In my opinion, there is (almost) always a grain of usefulness with each wave of technology that comes along. The trick is cutting through the bullshit, tuning out the haters, and understanding what is real and what is not real when it comes to the vendor noise. You should not be adopting every trend that comes along, but you should be tuning into the conversation and learning. After you do this long enough you will begin to see the patterns and tricks used by folks trying to push their warez. Hating on whatever came before is just one of these tricks. This is why startups hire young, energetic, an usually male voices to lead this charge, as they have no sense of history, and truly believe what they are pushing. Your job as a technologist is to develop the experience necessary to know what is real, and what is not, and keep a cool head as the volume gets turned up on each technological assault.