What was before A.P.I even existed?
Before APIs existed, software systems were monolithic, isolated islands that could not easily communicate with each other. If two different programs needed to share data, developers had to rely on physical media transfers, manual data reentry, or hardcoded tightly-coupled integrations. Because the abstract concept of a local "Application Programming Interface" dates back to the 1940s and 50s, "life before APIs" is generally divided into two eras: the era before local computer libraries (1940s–1950s) and the era before modern web/network APIs (1960s–1990s). The Pre-API Era: Connecting Isolated Mainframes (1940s–1950s) In the earliest days of computing, software was written as one massive block of code. To pass information between systems or reuse functionalities, programmers used the following physical and manual methods: Punch Cards and Magnetic Tapes: Data from one computer was printed onto physical punch cards or saved to tape reels. A human operator would walk t...