API Documentation vs API Mocking

Developers should learn API documentation skills when building or consuming APIs, as it enables clear communication of API capabilities and requirements meets developers should use api mocking to accelerate development cycles by decoupling frontend and backend work, allowing parallel development without waiting for apis to be fully implemented. Here's our take.

API Documentation

Nice Pick

Developers should learn API documentation skills when building or consuming APIs, as it enables clear communication of API capabilities and requirements

Pros

• It is crucial for public APIs to attract developers, internal APIs to facilitate team collaboration, and microservices architectures to ensure interoperability
• Related to: openapi-specification, rest-api

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

API Mocking

Developers should use API mocking to accelerate development cycles by decoupling frontend and backend work, allowing parallel development without waiting for APIs to be fully implemented

Pros

• It's essential for testing edge cases, error handling, and performance scenarios in a controlled environment, such as simulating slow responses or server errors
• Related to: api-testing, test-driven-development

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

The Verdict

These tools serve different purposes. API Documentation is a concept while API Mocking is a tool. We picked API Documentation based on overall popularity, but your choice depends on what you're building.

The Bottom Line

API Documentation wins

Based on overall popularity. API Documentation is more widely used, but API Mocking excels in its own space.