For example, I’ve had three people try to explain exactly what an API is to me, for more than two hours total, but I just can’t internalize it.
Many websites ‘serve’ some ‘purpose’. You access that service through a web browser (while you have internet access). But if you wanted a program (or an app) to navigate a website, that might be difficult. APIs are ‘Application (App) Programming Interfaces’. If you don’t want to teach a program how to navigate a website*, you can instead understand how the website’s API (if it has one) works, and then write a program that ‘talks to’ the website in that language, which is more minimalist. The way you interact with websites, they are very expressive—beautiful, but sometimes slow to load. When a program talks to the website via an API (‘instead of’ a web browser), it can get a response faster, and in a form it finds easier to read. (Unless your internet is out, or the website is down.) Part of how this works is that a website gives you everything as an image, whereas an API only answers specific questions when your computer asks them.
If you’ve ever seen a website with a youtube video stuck in the middle of it, then the website was probably made using the youtube API, because that’s easier to do than the alternatives, like creating a video website yourself.
*This may seem do-able, but if you want to compare prices of products between websites, do
as a cohesive whole
I hope such a guide exists, but those things you mentioned may more easily fit together in smaller categories. ‘The whole bucketload of terms you’ve learned’ aren’t all things that one person knows and handles by themself in every case.
Many websites ‘serve’ some ‘purpose’. You access that service through a web browser (while you have internet access). But if you wanted a program (or an app) to navigate a website, that might be difficult. APIs are ‘Application (App) Programming Interfaces’. If you don’t want to teach a program how to navigate a website*, you can instead understand how the website’s API (if it has one) works, and then write a program that ‘talks to’ the website in that language, which is more minimalist. The way you interact with websites, they are very expressive—beautiful, but sometimes slow to load. When a program talks to the website via an API (‘instead of’ a web browser), it can get a response faster, and in a form it finds easier to read. (Unless your internet is out, or the website is down.) Part of how this works is that a website gives you everything as an image, whereas an API only answers specific questions when your computer asks them.
If you’ve ever seen a website with a youtube video stuck in the middle of it, then the website was probably made using the youtube API, because that’s easier to do than the alternatives, like creating a video website yourself.
*This may seem do-able, but if you want to compare prices of products between websites, do
I hope such a guide exists, but those things you mentioned may more easily fit together in smaller categories. ‘The whole bucketload of terms you’ve learned’ aren’t all things that one person knows and handles by themself in every case.