The Stack Overflow Podcast Why call one API when you can use GraphQL to call them all?
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Jul 4, 2025 Matt DeBurgelis, CTO at Apollo GraphQL, dives into the transformative world of API orchestration. He highlights the advantages of using GraphQL over traditional REST APIs, emphasizing its declarative approach for better integration. The discussion covers the evolution of APIs and the rise of typed languages like TypeScript, showcasing how GraphQL optimizes data retrieval. Additionally, Matt reveals how GraphQL enhances user experience with nullable responses and strong typing, all while addressing the complexities of modern software development involving multiple microservices.
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Matt's Open Source Roots
- Matt DeBurgelis grew up influenced by early internet and open-source culture at MIT in the 90s.
- This ethos of collaboration shaped his positive view and excitement about software.
GraphQL's Declarative API Paradigm
- GraphQL is a declarative query language for APIs that views APIs as a connected graph of objects.
- This approach replaces tedious procedural API calls with declarative queries that describe desired data.
Complexity of Many APIs
- Developers face significant complexity managing and chaining 10s of APIs with error and throttling handling.
- Declarative approaches like GraphQL simplify this by letting developers describe what they want, not how to get it.