I got a lot of ideas for side projects rattling around in the old tin can. As part of my “No new projects” initiative, I’m trying to jump on building prototypes so I can decide if I want to explore ideas more or call it quits. A handful of my ideas are riffs or twists on existing app categories:

• A tennis ranking app… but modern and performant
• A nearby historical marker app… but with CarPlay support
• A nearby real estate listing app… but with CarPlay support

All three of those have ended unceremoniously at the same dead end: no API access. USTA denied my application for tennis rankings. The aptly named Historical Marker Database site doesn’t have a public API. And you have to be an MLS® Realtor® or Broker to get access to the MLS® listings. Womp womp.

Scraping the data is always an option… but I don’t like the ethics of that and worry about the brittleness of that dependency.

Ugh. I wish I could build these little apps so that tens of people could enjoy them. I’d even be willing to pay a small API access fee ($10/mo?) and run these at a loss but whatever happened to free APIs. When I survey the land of public APIs it feels like we’ve lost a lot since the Web 2.0 days where API access was almost a God-given right.

To prevent this time loop of disappointment from happening again, I’m swearing off APIs entirely. That’s a hard stance, but I need a backstop at the idea phase to prevent me from wasting limited life force. If I don’t have the data, or can’t generate the data, or it’s not an open protocol… it’s not worth building or even thinking about.

OAuth apps are a good option and generally the best way to exfiltrate data because it’s tied to a user’s account…. but you still might run into call limits, incomplete endpoints, user-scope limitations, and so on. History also shows us what the future holds. There’s a Tweetbot-style risk when building on a someone else’s platform. Even if your app drives activity to the parent application, your access might get cut because it competes or doesn’t drive stakeholder value. And if the idea isn’t big enough, being “a feature, not a product” is also a bad position to be in, lest you get Sherlock’d.

Where’s that leave me and my pile of side project ideas? Thankfully… in a good place. I can close out these project tabs and free up some much needed Brain RAM. It sounds strange but “No more APIs” makes “Making video games” jump up in the viability rankings for side projects too, because games have closed ecosystems. Or I could spend more time writing shitty sci-fi. Write a serial. Print some zines. Who knows.

If the goal of “No new projects” is to finish more projects than I start, then I have to accept that part of figuring out which ideas to explore means “Nope” is a potential answer. It’s also not a total loss, I’m learning along the way. For example, CarPlay only lets you choose from eight pre-approved templates. There’s also pre-defined app categories and diverting in the slightest would almost guarantee App Store rejection. That sucks the fun out it… but ayyyy, I’ll probably try again. But now I know the limitation for future projects and its in the limitations where play begins.