---
published: true
layout: post
title: API Simplicity Matters in this Moment
date: 2025-04-09T09:00:00.000Z
tags:
  - Simplicity
  - HTTP
  - Design
  - Complexity
  - Sprawl
  - Chaos
image: https://kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com/algorotoscope-master/america-immigration_dumping-ground-japanese-cherry-tree.jpeg
---
Arguing for the simplicity of HTTP APIs seems quaint in the face of so many different protocols in use for APIs as well as the artificial intelligence onslaught, however I would argue that it is even more important in this moment that it ever has been before. The sprawl, chaos, and complexity of your enterpriser API operations represents years of vendor-driven complexity washing up on your enterprise shores and capturing the attention of technologists looking for solutions to very big problems so they can be seen as a hero—-the challenge is now you have been left with trying to keep the ship moving forward. While doing this work, it is important that you strengthen your understanding of why API simplicity matters.

- **Simplicity Takes Work** - It takes work to distill down complex technical efforts into simple, intuitive, APIs, and the API sprawl you live in reflects years of this work not getting done across your teams, leaving you to make sense of what is happening.
- **Vendor-Driven Distractions** - From GraphQL to Kafka to Artificial Intelligence, vendors love to sell you complex easy buttons that will promise to reduce your complexity and give you more control, when they are just seeking more control.
- **Common Understanding** - The simpler you make something the more chances your teams taking over the work will be able to make sense of things and be able to iterative upon and build on your work rather than just sustaining or deprecating.
- **Understanding and Control** - It is much harder to understand large systems and assert any level of control over them, and the reasons technologists will complexify a simple business process are many, but often move things outside your control.
- **Total Cost of Operation** - When simple HTTP APIs are cheap and efficient to operate, while powering a wide variety of applications and integrations, and do not require a lot of specialized skills to produce and consume, keeping your business in the black. 

Us technologists love our complexity and we thrive on solving problems, but aren’t always the best at doing the work to truly understand a problem and do the ongoing work to refine our solutions-—we like quick and dirty technical solutions. Hacks. Doing APIs well takes work. Defining enterprise digital resources and capabilities takes work. Refining these resources and even deprecating when they are no longer in use takes work. API simplicity is something that will pay dividends across any desktop, web, mobile, device, or artificial intelligence application that uses them. Don’t fall for the easy button trap just because you live within the technical austerity imposed by those in your role before, and the influence vendors had over them—-make sure you are investing in API simplicity in this moment. It matters a lot right now. It is what will make or break your business.