Someone Get That Man An Honorarium (Anil on the Twitter API)
The fact that Anil publishes his thoughts for free sometimes astonishes me. He should be receiving honoraria for every blog post he writes. This whole post on the future of the now de-facto-standard Twitter API is quotable, so go read it, but here are a few excerpts:
>Now, the first meaningful efforts to support Twitter’s API on other services mark the maturation of the API as a de facto industry standard and herald the end of its period of rapid fundamental iteration.
On the password anti-pattern:
>This is usually where I’d insert a dozen examples of how sharing passwords screws users, services, and the ecosystem, but I know that developers often just use shared passwords because they’re lazy. Do the right thing, guys. The client devs will follow along.
On service discovery:
>Instead of reinventing the wheel, developers should look at supporting RSD and looking for something like a “tweetsapi” endpoint for these new services.
On standards bodies and committees:
>Here’s my recommendation: Don’t. Don’t do any of that shit, and don’t run off to make membership badges for the Treehouse Club quite yet. Instead, just iterate and ship. Keep making new apps and see what you can do to stretch the limits of the existing methods and structures.
Fellow web nerds and countrymen, please go read it, think on it, take it to heart.
Update: I was remiss to not mention Anil’s shoutout to Dave, who definitely deserves credit for his long-time evangelism of Twitter’s API as a service backbone:
>Finally, thanks a lot to Dave Winer for essentially inspiring a lot of players in blogging to move towards embracing the Twitter API.