| 720 points by randytandy on Aug 6, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 433 comments |
Graphql is great, but is totally over hyped. This is probably more of a rant or a frustrated dev outburst.
but beginner to mid level developers are lead down the path of USE GRAPHQL especially on youtube… and this is just unfair and wrong.
The good:
- It makes working with describing the data you want easy
- It can save you bandwidth. Get what you ask for and no more
- It makes documentation for data consumers easy
- It can make subscription easier for you to use
- Can let you federate API calls
The bad
- It is actually a pain to use, depending on the backend you are using you’ll have to manage
two or more type systems if there are no code first generates in your language
- It doesn’t support map/tables/dictionaries. This is actually huge. I get that there might be
some pattern where you don’t want to allow this but for the majority of situations working with json api’s you’ll end up with a {[key: string] : T} somewhere
- No clear path for Api versioning you’ll end up with MyQueryV1.01 MyQueryV1.02 MyQueryV1.03
Don’t use Graphql unless you’re managing a solution/problem set that facebook intended graphql for
Invest your time in a simpler solution then running to GraphQL first
thanks for reading my ted talk
please any senior dev’s drop your wise words so that any new dev’s can avoid tarpits