GraphQL and Conway's Law

I came across this Bluesky post from Jan Lehnardt: Fun fact, I once sat down with the inventor of GraphQL and after 30 minutes of him trying to explain the technical merits he finally came out with it: “GraphQL exists so Facebook frontend devs don’t have to talk to Facebook backend devs”. I've written about GraphQL before, such as in my Monday morning thoughts post Considering GraphQL, and my general dislike of it is not a secret (I noticed this ascerbic remark just now while looking for what I've written in the past). So it was with some enjoyment that I read Jan's post and the comments. It's not the first time that some technical solution has come about to address a non-technical challenge. There is of course Conway's Law that almost legitimises the approach. But not quite. For me, the double-punch of complexity (of the query language) and the protocol abuse (of HTTP) is equally matched by the friction it creates for humans in hand-crafted exploration and adoption. One example from…

Commenting on Bubbles has been removed. Why? If you want to talk about this post, write to the author, use the comments on their blog if it has them, or reply with a "RE:" post on your own blog. Suggestions? feedback@bubbles.town