APIs aren't a step forward, they're a step back. They're a terrible abstraction. Their interfaces are versioned and often not backwards compatible, data exchange is often poorly documented using no common conventions, the underlying HTTP interfaces vary greatly, there's no universal way to read the docs, and there is no single standard or convention for them.<p>Compare to Unix. Single way to run something, one simple return status, one basic input stream, two basic output streams, standard key=value pairs that can be inherited and passed on, generic arguments, there's usually a man page that fully explains how to use it, and they can be infinitely chained.<p>APIs require way too much "integration" and provide too little utility, and zero composeability. They're extra work with less usefulness. But, hey, "it's the web", and we're all too chickenshit to buck any trend that starts. We're slaves to whatever shitty paradigm takes over on "the web".<p>The web killed computer science innovation. We're just slowly and poorly rebuilding an operating system on top of a browser. But with more complexity and less utility.