[magicalhippo]

We make a CRUD desktop app, with a lot of integrations to customer systems. We got a standard set of XMLs, but we'll deal with whatever the customer has if we need to.

We recently got a support call from an upset client. A recent change had broken their integration, halting production.

This lead to some head scratching on our side, as we couldn't figure out what integration they were talking about.

Turned out they had paid some consultant quite a lot to script some tool similar to AutoHotkey to transfer data from their order system to our system. It would emulate copy pasting fields, tabbing along.

Our recent update had introduced a new field, thus screwing it all up.

As an aside, the "integration" used half an hour to transfer a single order due to how it did its work. An XML would have taken seconds tops.

[dano]

I had a client who wanted to build his business on top of our business via scripting our administrative back end - basically he wanted to be a value added reseller. He'd get angry when we modified our admin console. We offered him API access for a fee, but any fee was too much for his business model. It was quite frustrating and eventually we had to ignore his pleas for UI stability over years of time. All the while he could have had access to the API for less than he was paying the person to script our admin console. This was circa 2007, so perhaps API programmers just weren't the thing back in the day.

[bombcar]

When you have a hammer every problem is a nail.

It happens quite a bit - people solve the problem they have with what they know.

[cyanydeez]

Wlitlhl the way the internet is headed, I'm expecting an auto API generator to plug the API holes twitter and reddit are planning.

Webscraping will rise again.

[ljm]

As always, everything in software is cyclical

[nextaccountic]

> We offered him API access for a fee, but any fee was too much for his business model.

At this point, wasn't banning him in the cards?

[pc86]

Presumably he was still paying for the service, just not for API access.

[otagekki]

I think this is unfortunately what is going happen in the next few years as more tech companies will price their APIs out of reach of small businesses :/

[quickthrower2]

https://xkcd.com/1172/