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Re:Milkman – The Better Alternative to Postman by upmostly on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @05:11AM (#50363465)
Are API testing UIs really relevant anymore? I haven't manually tested an API for almost two years, and my APIs are SO much better. This kind of GUI is going to die over the next 5 years.

Postman should be seriously worried.

Re:Milkman – The Better Alternative to Postman by rs_rs_rs_rs_rs on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @05:21AM (#50363533)
I'm thinking the same thing, I haven't have a need for a tool like Postman in a long time, prompting is enough at this point. I wonder what features others use from Postman that an agent can't do quickly.
Re:Milkman – The Better Alternative to Postman by ihavesomeexampl on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @05:57AM (#50363824)
Quickly eye-balling onprem responses, skipping over UIs and just eyeballing data in general is really useful. Curl can do it but with a couple headers it becomes messy, also RPCs, websockets, etc. It’s just convenient to have a single place where you can eyeball all comms.
Re:Milkman – The Better Alternative to Postman by ihavesomeexampl on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @08:10AM (#50365063)
This in fact makes me wonder if there is a good “operations center” not just “dashboard” but for all the dev things, websockets triggering, db stats, running queries etc. We have many semi-custom onprems, they do not behave properly as a fleet I cannot just act like they are cattle. These servers contain many products in many configurations. It’s all quite messy..

I find the CPU/disk space dashboards useless. Stuff like monit is useful but status of literal OS services is only part of the picture. There are many layers here and I sometimes wonder how others do this. Surely not all companies just have disposable fleets of “serverless” things?

Re:Milkman – The Better Alternative to Postman by vr46 on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @05:22AM (#50363543)
You're not wrong - I bought a Bruno "Golden Edition" for $9 two years ago pre-release... and... I just don't use it. I'm not even sure why I keep it around, at 524.5 MB

...and... it's gone

Re:Milkman – The Better Alternative to Postman by upmostly on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @05:46AM (#50363735)
That's an interesting point. I wonder if over the next X years consumers will free up ALOT of disk space by just using agents and not needing to download and install desktop software.

Full disclosure, I'm building a desktop app called DB Pro [1] which is a modern desktop database client.

We're still doing well, and selling a lot, but we're having to think about what the next 2/3/4/5 years look like...

[1] https://dbpro.app

Re:Milkman – The Better Alternative to Postman by Muromec on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @06:19AM (#50364028)
You will own nothing and be happy they said
Re:Milkman – The Better Alternative to Postman by speed_spread on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @08:20AM (#50365168)
The things you own often end up owning _you_. Thus owning less stuff can mean being more free. Keep the essentials, wing the rest as you go.
Re:Milkman – The Better Alternative to Postman by ethbr1 on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @06:37AM (#50364221)
> if over the next X years consumers will free up ALOT of disk space by just using agents and not needing to download and install desktop software

Trading bits you own for rented redundant compute to recreate same seems... suboptimal?

How much power should we burn on everyone's agent recreating curl?*

* yes, agents have tools, but what is and isn't an agent tool is a gray area. "Desktop software" could be an agent tool with a human UI.

Re:Milkman – The Better Alternative to Postman by Mashimo on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @05:49AM (#50363756)
> Are API testing UIs really relevant anymore?

We have a postman collection mainly for testers to manually verify certain aspect of a otherwise fairly unit and end-to-end test covered API.

Re:Milkman – The Better Alternative to Postman by mkesper on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @06:16AM (#50364001)
Export to curl?
Re:Milkman – The Better Alternative to Postman by Mashimo on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @06:44AM (#50364278)
They are testers, not devs. They don't know how to use command line, or edit environment variables.
Re:Milkman – The Better Alternative to Postman by mrdootdoot on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @07:38AM (#50364737)
Have you considered converting this to an actual test suite in $language with AI doing the majority.
Re:Milkman – The Better Alternative to Postman by Mashimo on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @08:00AM (#50364956)
No, not really. It's already unit and end-to-end tested.

But sometimes the tester needs to make a test where they create something via the official API to use it in other parts of the app. They just open Postman (soon to be replaced), select the collection, select the server, select POST-item and of the the races. Not everything needs to be AI.

We could vibe code something specific for our needs, but that would be more or less again just end up something like postman again? At least I currently don't have the vision to see a big change.

Re:Milkman – The Better Alternative to Postman by upmostly on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @08:17AM (#50365141)
<finger pointing up>

This.

Why do you have a collection that is passed to humans for manual testing in the age of agents?

Re:Milkman – The Better Alternative to Postman by Mashimo on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @08:43AM (#50365405)
See my other respons to parent.
Re:Milkman – The Better Alternative to Postman by upmostly on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @09:29AM (#50366022)
I did, and you really should take a step back and ask an LLM how it can automate what you're doing manually as described above. You'd be surprised what's possible now.