APIs are like waiters - or are they?

Application Programming Interfaces - APIs - are everywhere and take many forms and styles.

Which is fine if you know how computer programs work and the kind of things they need to communicate with each other.

“...a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other”.

How to explain an API to a non-technical person? “Oh, APIs are like waiters in restaurants…” you start off glibly, not knowing the deep water into which you’re about to wade.

It’s a commonly used analogy. I’ve used it myself many times: An API is like a waiter…