What Is an API? The Waiter Between Your Apps

๐Ÿ’ป Tech Basics ยท 5-card lesson ยท ๐Ÿ”’ Premium

A cheerful owl wearing glasses and a graduation cap while holding a book

Preview โ€” The Goal

๐ŸŽฏ The Goal: 'API' might be the most-used, least-explained word in tech โ€” and it describes something you use hundreds of times a day. The picture that makes it click: an API is a WAITER. Your app (the customer) never walks into another company's kitchen (their servers and data). It hands a request to the waiter, the waiter goes to the kitchen, and returns with exactly the dish ordered โ€” nothing more. That one idea explains half of how the modern internet works.