How to Crush API Dev Work when You’re 100% Remote with Postman
Alex Reynolds
Published on December 21, 2023
When summer of 2017 arrived, I transitioned to a project which allowed me to contribute remotely. After 25 years of working in technology across eight different employers, I was finally able to determine if working 100% remotely would lead to productivity gains … or losses.
Just under 3 years before the pandemic arrived, I discovered I was twice as productive as before — simply by reviewing my commit history from in-office time periods where I was doing similar work. I also felt like the quality of my work improved, largely because of the ability to place myself in focus mode, devoid of any unexpected distractions.
I also realized which tooling dependencies I leaned on to help me to become more productive. Aside from the IntelliJ IDEA integrated development environment (IDE), Postman was a critical tool that helped me become successful as a service developer and architect.
In a bit of a personal retrospective, I wanted to talk about how Postman has helped me to build thriving APIs and to succeed while working in a 100% remote environment.
About Postman
Postman started as a side project of software engineer Abhinav Asthana, with a goal to simplify the API testing process. At the time I started using Postman, it was a free plugin that I could use within my Chrome browser.
Here’s an example of what Postman looked like back then:
Fast-forward to today where Postman is a standalone client used by over 25 million developers globally and half a million companies, including Box, LinkedIn, Paylocity, Paypal, Sling, Twilio, Twitter/X, and WhatsApp. Incredibly, 98% of today’s Fortune 500 companies are using Postman.
If you are interested in the evolution of Postman, check out The New Postman API Platform: Redefining API Management for the API-First World.
My Original Use Case
When I started using Postman in 2014, I was in dire need of a better way to exercise my APIs. Using a cURL command from my Windows-based developer machine was painful to say the least, relying heavily on copying and pasting from a Notepad document I kept on my desktop.
Just recapping that time of my life sends chills down my spine.
With the Postman app installed in Chrome, I was able to onboard quickly by importing those cURL commands from my Notepad document. As a result of the simple-but-effective user interface, my requests were presented in a better light and easily cloned to further exercise my services.
As I gained experience using Postman, I added environments and variables to my requests and started grouping them in collections that were much easier to reference. This approach allowed me to write a given request one time and be able to use the same request in every application environment — from local to development and even production.
Conclusion
My readers may recall that I have been focused on the following mission statement, which I feel can apply to any IT professional:
“Focus your time on delivering features/functionality that extends the value of your intellectual property. Leverage frameworks, products, and services for everything else.”
- J. Vester
To say that Postman adheres to my personal mission statement is a bit of an understatement. Instead, I would go as far to say that Postman has been a key to my personal success as a software engineer for the past eight years.
No joke.
Postman was there where I needed to be saved from executing painful cURL commands on my Windows-based computer, and it has helped me write APIs that have scaled both vertically and horizontally, building upon an API-first strategy.
Postman has eased any challenges associated with team members being located in remote locations around the world — sharing workspaces and collections, plus using the Postman CLI to execute API tests as part of the CI pipeline.
Postman has allowed my team to focus on building services which help extend the intellectual property of our current priority.
As I close out this personal retrospective, I ask that if you are looking for a way to boost the productivity of your team, consider exploring what Postman has to offer.
Have a really great day!