Zeno Rocha (VP of DX, WorkOS) Talks About RapidAPI for Mac (formerly Paw)

We have interviewed Zeno Rocha (VP of DX at WorkOS) to talk about his experience with using RapidAPI for Mac.

Introduction

I am the Vice President of Developer Experience at WorkOS. I am originally from Brazil but live in Los Angeles, California.

Before WorkOS, I was the chief product officer at Liferay Cloud. I have also worked at other companies, but I have always been a creator at heart. That's how I like to define myself.

I like building open-source software and sharing developer products with other folks, and that's my passion. I also created projects such as Dracula, a theme for VS Code and other editors, and also clipboard.js, which is another open-source library to help folks to copy to clipboard.

Zeno also published a book called "14 Habits of Highly Productive Developers".

Zeno published a book

First API Zeno used

I have played a lot with the GitHub API because it was such an easy way to get real data from a real system. And it was so easy to do that.

There were no GraphQL layers back then. It was just like you make a GET request, and you can see the results in the browser. You don't even need to authenticate. If you need more quota, then you request and use an API key. It was so easy that you may want to continue to play around more.

So today, I work in an API-first company. A lot has changed from the moment I made my first API call until today. But that foundation is still there. And that's why I love it so much.

API development workflow

I mostly used cURL, and then I would need to create some sort of layer on top of it to manipulate the data I would receive.

It was always some sort of Node.js wrapper that I would use, but then that was like one step further. I first needed to see the API myself. The Google API, the Google Maps API, or the GitHub API was always like just trying it on the browser, and if I couldn’t, I could use cURL to PUT, POST, PATCH, etc., and go from there.

Zeno at Liferay symposium

Discovering RapidAPI for Mac

My real "aha" moment was when I went from a consumer to a creator of APIs.

Back in 2013, I was really into web components. I was told that it was the future of the web, and I was so excited that "oh, this is the next HTML5", and I wanted to help that ecosystem. So I created a project called customelements.io. It was the registry of web components. Think of it as npm but instead of node packages, we would download web components.

I started by creating a REST API, and very early on in that project, I noticed that it'd been a pain to just use cURL to make these API requests. I was already using a MacBook, and I wanted something easy. I didn't want a chrome extension.

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I wanted something that felt fast, and when I downloaded RapidAPI for Mac, that was the impression I got. I was like, "woohoo! Okay, this feels native", and that's why I fell in love with it.

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The design was also much better than the other ones. All the other tools wanted to create something more customized. And it feels like RapidAPI for Mac allows you to focus on whatever you are trying to do. It is the type of tool that doesn't get in the way. So it's really agnostic and straightforward to use.

Just like the structure of the layout, we can see the response on the right and the request you make on the left. So that was my first exposure to it. That's when I started using it. By now, it's been 8 or 9 years since I have been using RapidAPI for Mac.

One thing that brings him back to RapidAPI For Mac

I had moments when I would use RapidAPI for Mac every single day, and then I would go and not use it for months, and then I would go back.

Then maybe there was another tool in the market, or maybe there was a co-worker who was already using something, and they wanted to use the same software. With Postman, that was the case. Like many times I gave it a shot. I was like, "ah! No, this isn't it". Then I would do it again, and I would be so frustrated.

I would say it comes down to the developer experience. The way I see it, there is a hierarchy for developer experience, and then the base of that pyramid is performance, and I don't think there is any app that can beat the performance of RapidAPI for Mac.

Features of RapidAPI for Mac Zeno use currently

I loves certain things about the RapidAPI for Mac and frequently uses them when I am building a sample application locally or testing a feature built by the team.

First on the list is the ability to switch between environments with ease. Because sometimes, I am running the system locally, and other times I want to check it in production to see how it works.

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Another feature I use often is the automatic code generator, where one can go like, "Oh, here is how you can do it using Node Fetch or Ruby".

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Since they are building a product that supports many different platforms and languages, they want to be embedded in those communities. This feature helps them be native to the ecosystems they serve, which means a lot to Zeno.

I remember another thing that changed the game for me when RapidAPI for Mac introduced the Cloud feature. It allows me to sync my projects and share them with my team. I have done it multiple times where I shared an environment with a co-worker so they could see things like my request's parameters, headers, and response to replicate an issue I discovered in the product. I feel that it has made the loop of debugging much faster.

RapidAPI Client for VS Code

I have played around a bit, but it is not a part of my workflow yet. One thing I love is not having to leave my code editor.

Zeno summed the experience up by saying that there is something about the cost of switching context where the moment you press "command+tab" (to change the window), your mind wanders to another place. Then, getting back to that stage of productivity takes time.

Wrap Up

It was a pleasure to interview Zeno. He's a brilliant developer and a valuable member of the community who maintains one of the most popular VS Code themes.

You can follow Zeno on Twitter.