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Comment by zzen | Hacker News Reader

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zzen·

For consumers, "there's an app for that".

For businesses, "there's an API for that".

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I'd follow that with:

For tech businesses, "there's an API for that".

For 90% of the other businesses, "what's an API?"

There's a vast amount of value to be captured by adding pleasant and easily used interfaces over otherwise boring APIs.

For 90% of other businesses, there's an Excel export. There's your API.

Excel export to printer to fax machine, in some cases.

Someone literally requested this as an import option for Appointment Reminder, because it was easier for their office staff to understand than uploading.

I thought they wanted to download the Googles to their printer.

Well, its a two-way process. Upload to the Googles through the fax machine, download the Googles through the printer.

and I'd counter that point with there are a ton of businesses being built on top of API's to deliver the types of products those "Other 90%" won't build themselves.

Innovation drives more innovation, the future is business being built on top of the framework these API's are laying

There's a massive gap between the tools that are given to [business] end customers vs the APIs. If I'm savvy enough to propose complex processes or ask nuanced questions but not savvy enough to write code against an API to get it done, I'm SOL. Expensive developer is my only real solution.

Agree that good API UIs (I realize that's two "interfaces") has a great future ahead.

For government, "Sorry, you're not authorized to access dot com resources, so we'll spend 2 million and several years developing a poor replacement."

I'm not bitter about Army Regulations regarding *.mil TLDs at all.

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