API Overview

APIs! What are they? How do they work? Are they something I need to worry about or what's their Deal? Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are constructs made available in programming languages to allow developers to create complex functionality more easily. They abstract more complex code away from you, providing some easier syntax to use in its place.

As a real-world example, think about the electricity supply in your house, apartment, or other dwellings. If you want to use an appliance in your house, you plug it into a plug socket and it works. You don't try to wire it directly into the power supply — to do so would be really inefficient and, if you are not an electrician, difficult and dangerous to attempt.