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Question: What is Twitter API?
Twitter has added a new feature called API or the Application Programming Interface. API is a way for a program in Twitter to do task relating to data modification. It makes every feature in your site on Twitter is supported by a high technology of the API mechanism.

What?  WHAT?

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Date: 2011-06-10 10:49 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] aishabintjamil.livejournal.com
Putting on my geek hat for a moment. API is a generally used term in programming for a specification that describes how to access features of another program so you can write a program that uses them without having to know the details of the program to which the API refers.

For example a hypothetical API for twitter might specify that if you wanted to post a message to twitter, you could do it by invoking a routine named "Post-my-message". It would might expect information as part of that invocation like the text of your tweet, the user ID the tweet was supposed to come from, and a password for that user ID. That way you could write a program of your own that would post tweets for you, without actually logging in.

Lots of things have APIs. For example, if you were writing a computer game to run on windows, you'd want to use the API which lets you display things on the screen. That way you don't know to worry about the nasty hardware details of the screen, or how windows manages it (which Microsoft almost certainly doesn't want to tell you either....)

As for the English in the description, it was probably written by someone in India whose native language is not English, and everyone knows programmers and engineers can't write in anything but code, so they probably figure the target audience won't know the difference either.

You don't want to know how many weird reactions a dual major in computer science and a foreign language, with an English minor got me while I was going through college...

Date: 2011-06-10 10:52 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] aishabintjamil.livejournal.com
Darn, I wish I could edit that comment. I was typing with the cat on my lap, and it did *not* improve my English....

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