Re:An API is a user interface
by astn-austin on Wednesday November 25, 2020 @03:41AM
(#25207152)
The way I read it was:
When you are programming against an API, you are using the interface. When you use an interface, you are a user. You are even the expected User from the API designers perspective. You are that API designers customer. In your job as the User of that API, you also have different customers you serve. But that doesn't mean you are no longer a User of the API. Because you are the user in this case, using an API, then that must mean your going to have a User Experience with that User Interface that just happens to be in a API.
> When you use an interface, you are a user.
It’s an interesting perspective. I guess by extension, that the use of a programming language, makes the programmer a user of the resultant program, and the language a “user interface”?
Yes, a programming language being a user interface is a common analogy.
A “user interface” is associated with human interaction, whereas an API is associated with interaction with other systems. That human interaction is in terms of the user of the program, not the producer.
That programmers are human, might mean that they need to program against an API, but surely that doesn’t mean that the term “user interface” should be extended to it?