Tech storyteller and journalist Jennifer Riggins came by for a conversation after her post in The New Stack about why nothing has changed in the world of APIs for the last fifteen years. Jennifer and I go all the way back to the beginning, and she has seen all the same things I’ve seen. We both complained a bit about the impacts of AI, but really found that most of the lack of change has been a business thing and not really just technical. I like Jennifer’s focus on developers in this moment, and she got me thinking about the relationship between the legacy API management we both have lived through and this new platform reality we operate within.
I think Jennifer’s story gets at the literal heart of the insecurity that holds back meaningful investment in API resources. Enterprises have been struggling with API sprawl long before most recent AI trend started–it is just exponentially making things harder for teams working to tame the API sprwl. I am convinced that the stagnation in the API space is primarily due to short-term priorities involved venture backed startups, and eneterprises refusing to focus on the fundamentals of their API operations before moving onto shiny new things. I always enjoy sitting down with Jennifer. It has been way too long and I appreciate her coming by to share some wisdom around why things aren’t as progressive as they could be in the API space.
