The biggest mistake web devs ever made was focusing on corporate-owned APIs instead of on new and innovative open protocols.
I don't care how all-encompassing Big Social becomes -- or whether Google or Apple can keep their market valuations ongoing.
Those "critical" APIs can be yoinked at any moment.
However, SMTP and HTTP have now been used for decades. So why not build on the next generation of open protocols?
@secretlyextrovert My concern isn't about whether or not Big Tech will adopt open protocols -- that should just be assumed.
My concern is about the long term viability of Internet tech, as well as the future long term success of a web dev's career.
Once a protocol is open, access can't be taken from you.
@atomicpoet in my personal experience, having something like “integrated with Twitter api to do XYZ” on your CV is going to hold more sway than “working with some bleeding edge protocol”.
I don’t think im getting you though. You say the protocol can’t be taken away - that’s not what companies are doing though? The likes of Twitter have deprecated access to the data…
@secretlyextrovert But I was around when Twitter pretty much did their big API yoink. Lots of colleagues lost their livelihoods over night.
I was one of the lucky ones in that the software I helped build was too popular to kill.
Furthermore, now that I've come out the other side, I don't care if you've integrated Twitter's API because I'm thinking about the future.
And to be completely frank, Twitter is not the future.
Chris Trottier
secretlyextrovert