if it makes you feel better, their API is text based and doesnt use message delimiters, so update TWS with great care, because a single new character off in any message will break your entire stream of data, order execution(and especially combo) entries, etc..

They also have some of the worst real time market data available (intraday), absolutely horrendous historical market data request rate limiting and more. Great brokerage, but if you're interested in API for more than orders I recommend other services for realtime data

Who do you recommend for an API for more than orders? Just yesterday I was looking at IBs data streams to figure out if they give me what I need without hitting rate limits.

depends - if you're doing aggressive intraday trading based on realtime data (tick or so), i can recommend many depending on need and cost, email me for details. As someone who used to trade for a living with a technical bent, Im passionate about it

if you just need reliable daily without 1440 minute bars going wack IB is probably ok