Software developers know not to reinvent the wheel. So, they lean on reusable micro-services – and their corresponding application programming interfaces (APIs) – as building blocks for application components. “Developers want to focus on the added value they can bring instead of rebuilding things that have great solutions out there already,” says Grace Francisco, vice president of developer relations, strategy, and experience at Cisco. “APIs make that easy for developers to consume.”
And they have been consuming: Nearly 90% of developers use APIs in some capacity, according to a 2020 SlashData survey.