Software Development Blog

Weekly Newsletter Friday 19th Dec 2025 - The Great API Translation Game

Hi there, Rob here…

APIs are how software systems talk to each other. In theory, it is a calm, structured exchange of information. In practice, it is more like two slightly drunk people shouting at each other across a noisy party. Sometimes the message gets through. Sometimes it absolutely does not.

One system sends a perfectly reasonable request. The other system hears something completely different. A number arrives as a string. A required field is missing. A date turns up in a format nobody agreed on. Everyone insists they are following the spec. Someone is lying.

This is why integrations fail in such creative ways. Each side makes assumptions. Each side has its own rules, limits, and interpretations. Add rate limits, timeouts, retries, and partial failures, and suddenly your simple “connect A to B” task becomes a long evening of log reading and quiet sighing.

The hardest part is that APIs rarely fail loudly. They fail politely. A 200 response with the wrong data. A success message that quietly hides the fact that half the request was ignored. Everything looks fine until someone notices numbers drifting or customers missing.

So when an integration breaks, it is rarely because someone did something stupid. It is usually because two systems misunderstood each other. The fix is patience, good logging, defensive checks, and accepting that translation is hard, especially when both sides think they are being perfectly clear.

👉 APIs do not argue. They just misunderstand.

Rob & Jason
Dev Partners

PS. We are Dev Partners, helping systems talk to each other without tears. Most of the time.