Four Pillars of Modern APIs

Rakhirandiseo · Post by **Rakhirandiseo** » Sun Feb 09, 2025 8:03 am

Nylas, a developer platform for integrating business applications through application programming interfaces (APIs), surveyed developers about APIs and used the results to create a new version of its API. Isaac Nassimi, senior vice president of products at Nylas, spoke to The New Stack about what should be in a modern API .

APIs can seem like magic — unless you're a developer. For developers, APIs, it turns out, require a lot of work to make the technology seem magical.

A study conducted by Nylas, which offers APIs and developer tools for building and integrating email, calendar, and contacts features into apps and software, found that developers spend a lot of time working with APIs. The company surveyed 1,200 U.S. developers, engineering managers, and technical leaders, with about 60% of responses coming from developers. Seventy-three percent of respondents said they spend up to five hours a week on API maintenance and troubleshooting. Only 23% of respondents said they consistently experience poor API performance.

While APIs are supposed to make integration easier, 64% of respondents said integrating new APIs into their existing tech stack is a major challenge. “This is where quick start guides, SDKs, and support can help by removing friction throughout the integration process and enabling developers to deliver projects faster,” the report notes.

The survey also asked how much code is slovenia mobile database with and without an API — supposedly a good indicator of a developer's experience level. It turned out that while 80% believed they could write at least 500 lines of code without an API, 41% admitted they would still write at least 500 lines of code with an API.

The researchers concluded that a modern API should have four components: performance, developer experience, security, and intelligence. According to Isaac Nassimi, all four of these factors were taken into account when creating the latest version of his API, Nylas API v3. And they started with performance and latency.