On-call Engineer

Whatever you need to know about software development

gRPC vs GraphQL: What are the differences?

2023-03-20 3 min read general
gRPC and GraphQL are both popular technologies used for building APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that allow different systems to communicate with each other. While they may seem similar at first glance, they have some key differences that make them more suitable for different use cases. gRPC is a remote procedure call (RPC) framework that uses protocol buffers (protobufs) as the underlying data serialization format. It was developed by Google and is used in many of their internal services. Continue reading

What is GraphQL and how it works with sample schema snippets

2023-03-06 2 min read general
GraphQL is a query language for APIs that provides a more efficient and flexible alternative to traditional REST-based API architectures. Developed and open-sourced by Facebook in 2015, GraphQL is quickly becoming the de-facto standard for building modern, data-driven applications. At its core, GraphQL is a declarative language that allows clients to specify exactly the data they need from an API. Instead of multiple endpoints that return fixed data structures, a GraphQL API only has a single endpoint that accepts queries. Continue reading

GraphQL vs REST

2023-03-04 2 min read JavaScript
As a developer, choosing the right tool for the job is crucial to building successful and maintainable applications. In the realm of APIs, two popular choices are REST and GraphQL. While both serve the same purpose of providing a way for different applications to communicate with each other, there are some key differences between the two that make GraphQL a compelling alternative to REST. One of the main advantages of GraphQL over REST is its ability to provide a more flexible and powerful query language. Continue reading