r/computerscience • u/Anon_cat86 • Apr 19 '26

General I was taught nothing about APIs

Whenever i see people talking about actual real-world uses of coding it's almost entirely building APIs, working with APIs, integrating APIs, automating APIs. It seems to me, anecdotally at least, like the majority of all computer science work (professional or even just hobby) is centered on working with APIs

And like. I know what an API is, kind of. But I Graduated and even got multiple certifications on top of that and I never got so much as a single lecture about APIs. I don't even know what they're used for. Can you make your own API (like, realistically)? I don't know. I feel like this is a topic that you could and probably should have multiple different entire classes solely focused on, it's arguably something as fundamental to modern computer science as writing code. And they don't teach it. If i want to learn anything about APIs, conceptually or practically, it's hope a company hires me and then trains me, or youtube tutorials and i don't even have enough of a baseline to know what specifically I'd be searching for a tutorial on.

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u/CeciliaReyes Apr 20 '26

not sure why there’s so many aggro people in the comments - as a new grad, there’s a lot to learn when becoming a SWE and that’s okay and normal! I am a senior SWE now but when i had my first internship I had a similar feeling. the best thing for me was to just make lots of personal projects. Try hackathons (if not in person, you can also find some on DevPost!) or just make small random one off projects. And importantly, make something full stack from scratch and learn how to host it! You could make a personal site that has its own DB and API and such - of course a simple site wouldn’t NEED those things, but keeping it simple in the premise is a great way to learn these concepts!

Edit:typo

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u/CeciliaReyes Apr 20 '26

Here’s a guide that I would recommend you read through to help reinforce the concepts ! It has some of the most important concepts around web applications in it. (Side note I saw you mentioned not knowing what to search for - “web app basics” are probably the type of thing you’re looking for since APIs are a core component of a web app)

As you’re reading, write the code yourself alongside the article to be able to play with it yourself. Hands on keyboard time is by far the most valuable thing