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What Is API And Why Should We Use It?
As a junior web developer, you might have heard already about API and that it is something really important.
But what is that exactly? I will try to explain that to you in the briefest way, the way how I understood it at the beginning of my learning journey.
The official definition
API stands for application programming interface and means a connection between computers or between computer programs. (That's what Wikipedia tells us).
Not very informative, right? 🤔
I don't think so and that’s why you are reading this article.
The most common definition
Another very common definition that probably you have already seen a little bit everywhere on the Internet is that you have to imagine API process as a cook, a waiter, and a customer in the restaurant.
Meaning, that the cook provides us with some data(server, backend), the waiter brings this data(API) and the customer receives the data(user interface, front-end).
Sounds very clear but how it actually works in real life? Unfortunately, there are no waiters who can bring us our data and we have to create everything by ourselves.