Let’s be honest—API integration is one of the most deceptively complex tasks in modern development.
From the outside? Looks simple. Plug one system into another, pass some data, hit an endpoint. Done, right?
In practice? Welcome to the wild world of mismatched schemas, brittle auth flows, unpredictable rate limits, and half-baked docs.
That’s why it absolutely blows my mind when I see low-code platforms treating integration like a drag-and-drop form builder. Yes, visual tools are great—but pretending that non-developers can handle enterprise-grade integration without a hitch? That’s how teams end up rewriting everything six months later.
👨💻 Integration Is a Developer’s Job
Here’s the truth: if your API integration handles anything important—like syncing customer data, processing invoices, updating CRMs—you need it to be done by someone who understands:
- Data modeling
- Request/response structure
- Auth schemes (OAuth2, API keys, token refresh)
- Retry logic
- Payload transformation
- Versioning and schema evolution
- …and all the edge cases that never make it into the docs
That’s developer work. Period.
🧰 So We Built Martini: Low Code with Developer Control
I’ve been on both sides—writing integrations from scratch, and fighting with tools that try to “simplify” too much. That’s why my team at Lonti built Martini.
It’s a low-code platform, but not the kind that tries to take developers out of the equation.
Instead, Martini is API-first and developer-focused. You can:
- Visually orchestrate APIs
- Write custom logic (Java, Groovy, JavaScript)
- Secure endpoints and apply governance
- Transform and map data visually or in code
- Build error handling into the workflow itself
- Publish services and expose them as REST or GraphQL APIs
- Monitor everything with logs and runtime insight
And when you pair it with Negroni (data modeling) and Bellini (frontend builder), you get an end-to-end platform that respects how real apps are built.
🚫 No More One-Click “Connectors” That Break
You know what I’m talking about—those tools that promise “Connect to Salesforce in one click!” but the moment your API needs a custom header or response mapping, it falls apart. Or worse, you can’t debug it.
With Martini, you control everything. From how the API is consumed, to how it behaves under the hood.
It’s fast—but never fragile.
💡 Devs Shouldn’t Have to Fight Their Tools
Integration should be something developers can build confidently, quickly, and correctly. Not something we dread because we’re stuck babysitting middleware, debugging black boxes, or writing the same boilerplate over and over.
That’s what Martini is built to solve.
You can move fast.
You can go deep.
You can build things that actually scale.
And you never have to hand off mission-critical logic to someone who doesn't know what a 429 response code means.
Original source: Why API Integration Is Too Important to Leave to Non-Developers
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