Observing the power of APIs (Interview)

The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source

Jean Yang’s research on programming languages at Carnegie Mellon led her to realize that APIs are the layer that makes or breaks quality software systems. Unfortunately, developers are underserved by tools for dealing with, securing & understanding APIs.

That realization led her to found Akita Software, which led her to join Postman by way of acquisition. That move, at least in part, also led her to join us on this very podcast. We think you’re going to enjoy this interview, we sure did.

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Sponsors:

• Sentry – Get $100 towards your error monitoring with Sentry! Use the code changelog.
• Statsig – Build faster with confidence. Startups to Fortune 500s rely on Statsig to make data-driven decisions. Ship smarter and faster with the unified platform for feature flags, experimentation, and analytics. Our listeners get free white-glove onboarding, migration support, and 5 million free events per month.
• Traceroute Podcast – Listen and follow Season 3 of Traceroute starting November 2 on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts!

Featuring:

• Jean Yang – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
• Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
• Jerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

• Modern software is built on APIs featuring Abhinav Asthana (Changelog Interviews #360)
• Why Aren’t There More Programming Languages Startups?
• Building for the “99% Developers”
• Postman Live Insights: automatically discover, monitor, and add APIs
• Zapier | Automation that moves you forward
• Flows | Postman API Platform

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

บท

1. This week on The Changelog (00:00:00)

2. Sponsor: Sentry (00:01:06)

https://sentry.io/welcome/?utm_source=changelog&utm_medium=paid-community&utm_content=site&utm_campaign=changelog2023&code=changelog

3. Start the show! (00:05:04)

4. Welcoming Jean Yang (00:05:31)

5. From Akita to Postman (00:05:54)

6. Was acquisition the goal? (00:09:01)

7. Day 1 at Akita (00:10:55)

8. Programming languages research (00:13:40)

9. 3rd-party integrations (00:19:49)

10. Fearing & loving APIs (00:20:55)

11. Getting logs from an API (00:24:01)

12. All APIs are black boxes (00:25:09)

13. The observability agent (00:27:49)

14. Where the agent lives (00:30:13)

15. The agent's footprint (00:30:55)

16. The agent's data collection (00:32:23)

17. Sponsor: Statsig (00:37:31)

https://statsig.com/changelog

18. The 99% developers (00:40:58)

19. You are not Google/Meta/etc (00:46:42)

20. The service adapter pattern (00:50:43)

21. The acquisition process (00:55:31)

22. Acquisition feelings (00:59:27)

23. Category maturity level (01:03:33)

24. Sponsor: Traceroute (01:05:09)

https://deploy.equinix.com/traceroute/

25. Demo! (for our eyes only) (01:06:43)

26. Early impacts (01:09:20)

27. Low-code with APIs (01:11:43)

28. It's all APIs! (01:19:08)

29. Fans from afar (01:24:17)

30. Up next (01:24:46)