
Ask HN: How many of you thought of building an API instead of an app? - artembugara
Hi,<p>I am a data engineer. Like many of you, I&#x27;ve always had these ideas to build something myself.<p>Right now I do have one well-going side project where we work as a group of people. However, the complexity&#x2F;time invested in managing and communication grows exponentially when it&#x27;s not your full-time job.<p>Therefore, at some point, I realized that a good alternative might be to start from an API that you can build yourself (that actually can be heavily used to build an app).<p>So, my question for those who are good with the back-end things, have you ever considered such an option?<p>I, for example, started building an API that gives access to a database with the news data.
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dangerface
Makes sense to me, recently I wrote a function that checks domain name
availability.

I started to write my own thinking it would be simple enough, but each tld has
its own whois server with its own layout that needs parsed and they all rate
limit.

I had a look around for a better method and found some examples on
[https://rapidapi.com/](https://rapidapi.com/) of other people who have rolled
their own and are now selling it as an api

I decided to just write it myself but now I have it built I think I might put
it on rapidapi too.

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artembugara
Yeah, I am also quite impressed by how easy you could do it with RapidAPI.

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jfoster
I think one challenging aspect of this approach is that beyond something
trivial and without a lot of experience, you might design the API in a way
that is inconvenient for real usage. If you develop the app as well, you'll
have to use the API you build, and you'll make adjustments as necessary.

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artembugara
I assume that there are many more ways to make mistakes while doing something
as complex as an app, but I agree with your point.

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muzani
This is actually a surprisingly good idea. I'm heavily a front end person and
never really thought of just releasing a API. It's taking a surprisingly long
time to set up a CRUD, even small things like responsive drop downs.

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thedevindevops
What about a simple console app that consumes an sdk you develop alongside the
API?

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artembugara
you mean in general?

