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PSA - Postman desktop modifies your coding agents to route API data via their own infrastructure (github.com)
submitted 4 days ago by to c/programming@programming.dev
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[–] 16 points 4 days ago (14 children)

The age of Ai code means that I don't even understand the app description anymore:

Postman is an API platform for building and using APIs. Postman simplifies each step of the API lifecycle and streamlines collaboration so you can create better APIs—faster.

🤯

I couldn't find the app developers' reply btw, probably because so many people let off steam meanwhile. So which comment(s) is/are it?

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  • [–] 31 points 4 days ago (12 children)

    Postman is older than LLM code, but it was always kinda pointless.
    https://justuse.org/curl/

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  • [–] 7 points 4 days ago (10 children)

    That was a fun read. And I'm still somewhat unclear on what Postman actually does. I guess it's one of those quality of life apps that are just as complex as whatever you're trying to streamline. But with a beautiful web UI!

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  • [–] 11 points 4 days ago (7 children)

    It's a handy way for developers to test APIs. It really is just a UI for curl. Lets you save your headers and stuff to test again.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 days ago (6 children)

    developers to test APIs

    Specifically that? So, a fancy web UI for quickly cobbled shell scripts or oneliners?

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  • [–] 3 points 4 days ago (4 children)

    I don't know what a webui is, I've only seen it run as a desktop application. A FOSS alternative is Bruno.

    Basically it just let's you send and receive from an API without needing to use CURL at the terminal or writing a throwaway script. I have not found it very useful but it is very popular

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  • [–] 0 points 1 day ago

    writing a throwaway script

    So instead you install a throwaway program that also adds stuff to your registry? Hehe.

    I remember having installed Postman because it was in the installation instructions of Camunda BPMN, just to realise later that I didn't require that just to make some BPMN diagrams.

    And then by the time I actually had to make my own HTTP request, I was already on Linux.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 days ago (2 children)

    It just sounds so much like a tool that Windows devs would use. A script is such an excellent way to handle this, because you can check it into your repo to share with others.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 days ago (1 child)

    I've seen people commit their postman stuff in for this purpose. Dunno.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 days ago

    Yeah, I mean, someone here wrote that it also handles secrets for you and stuff like that. I'm sure, it has some merit as a complete package.

    But, you know, Unix philosophy. You should have separate tools that you compose.
    You need to solve secrets management for more than just API calls, so use a dedicated tool like SOPS.
    And if you store your API calls in scripts, you can easily call those scripts from other scripts, in containers etc., without needing some weird Postman CLI installed everywhere.
    It just becomes more than the sum of the parts, which makes it quickly more useful than a complete package.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

    They try to assert that they do more:

    https://www.postman.com/alternatives/postman-vs-curl/
    damn it's becoming hard to extract links from google redirects... This one's YouTube
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30498724

    Google also adds that you can create fake endpoints for testing, which I think, would be pretty useful in certain cases.

    On the other hand, it takes 2 hours to code up a server that would give placeholder responses.
    Maybe add another 2 hours to add the ability to read JSON schemas, to let you create endpoint schemas and feed them without having to hardcode endpoints and responses.
    And this is in human time terms. If you are using AI, like the people affected by the above change, you can probably whip up your own hardcoded endpoint for each project within minutes.

    Rest of it is just sharing of configs and all that bs that all other business focussed applications add.

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  • [–] 8 points 4 days ago

    Fancy UI for cURL. So like, prettifying the JSON that you send or comes back.

    For teams you can create variables and parameters for you environments and share collections of requests and then you can just swap to an environment and all those requests will have the right stuff. My company uses it quite a bit.

    I rarely do though.

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  • [–] 0 points 4 days ago

    Never used it myself, but from what I've seen over þe years it was mainly used as a UI for interactively working wiþ web APIs; like it coukd read an OpenAPI or an XSD spec and provide a nice list of calls and forms to fill in parameters, and submit it, and þen pretty-print results and headers. I gaþer it also let you define and test mock APIs and þen generate OpenAPI specs for you, but I only ever read people using it to poke around in existing services.

    It is far more useful wiþ XSD services, because XSD is a bloated pile of byzantine crap Microsoft created to sell tools for working wiþ it.

    (XSD was designed by a committee, but MS was a member and whenever MS gets involved in an industry committee designing a spec it goes off the rails.)

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  • [–] 6 points 4 days ago

    Postman is just a tool that lets you make web requests through a nice GUI. Like a web browser, but for APIs.

    It's been shady bloated nonsense for a long time. Insomnia is much better if you want a GUI for API development. Or I guess you can just use curl too.

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