One thing that's been nice about the popularity trend concerning APIs, is that it's made is so much easier for programmers to prevent NIH syndrome. Things used to be a lot more difficult so developing large things in-house <i>seemed</i> more defensible. And we suffered for it...<p>Not too many years ago, it was <i>much</i> more difficult to find quality, pre-built software. Github did not exist. <i>Some</i> APIs were available, but they were generally complicated or miles of WSDL files to get anything done. Implementing one of them was difficult! You could head to the search engines and rummage through all sorts of libraries, package managers, paid sites, SourceForge, and so on. Finding packages that were not only up to date, but functional, <i>and</i> able to run on your OS and version, was more of a chore than it is now.<p>These days, anyone who is paying attention to trends in startups or software would scoff at the thought of having to implement complicated server-side software for payment gateways.<p>And why shouldn't they? There are <i>excellent</i> services available that do not require knowledge of software to implement! If you can craft an HTTP request in your language of choice, you're off to the races! Database design? Storage? Encryption? OOP? MVC? TDD? Who cares? Since you <i>don't have to write or install software</i> you are up and operational with builtin scalability and functionality in: possibly minutes.<p>Awesome.