I gave a talk for SCaLE 2025.

link My History of Talks

One of the biggest discoveries of my college years is I love public speaking, especially with visuals. After years of creating my own work, I like to educate people on what I’ve learned in that time, and especially to learn about their insights.

Every talk I give I aim to raise the stakes. My first 9 talks were all given at my university’s Linux User Group, or LUG. Those talks are:

• September 14, 2022: Software Licenses
• October 14, 2022: TEXT
• November 22, 2022: History of Network Surveillance
• February 6, 2023: History of Computer Communication
• March 1, 2023: Zero Days
• February 14, 2024: TIME
• April 18, 2024: Mario Maker 2
• September 23, 2024: HACK
• November 25, 2024: Game Consoles

Then I gave a talk to my university’s Association for Computing Machinery, or ACM. That talk was about Reverse Engineering on November 19, 2024. It summarized my years of research into Mario Maker 2, the WiiU, 3DS, Google Maps and Baidu Maps, among others.

link SCaLE

I knew my 11th talk, the first given outside of Mines, had to be at SCaLE. I attended SCaLE 2024 after I learned it was the biggest community-run Linux conference in North America. As an active LUG member for 3 years it made the greatest sense.

As a Linux conference it had less topic flexibility than my local LUG, so I knew my prior discussions on cybersecurity, gaming and climbing in vents was not going to cut it. I spent a while tying together my all-encompassing interest in Reverse Engineering, REing, and the concepts SCaLE was showcasing. I eventually realized I do have a shared interest in both designing APIs, which appeals to a group of developers, and breaking them, which is my primary specialty. I knew I could bring a fresh new perspective to many audience members if I gave the talk right, so I went to work on the draft.

Over the course of two 10 hour days, as well as reviews from peers and tweaks to make the narratives clearer, I came to the crux of the talk: the industry is all wrong about APIs.

link My Philosophy

I believe that the ethos of tech is characterized by its humble beginnings as a truly open platform where the best wins. When everything is open, it is possible to reach the pinnacle of what software is capable of. Whether that be Compaq, a company that made the IBM PC affordable, or the SMM2 API, which gave the community an entirely new way of engaging with the game, there is always some way we can improve. Always something better to provide to the world.

My definition of "hacking":

Hacking: Seeing larger systems as intrinsically flexible. Recognizing the power of the individual to exercise control over the system. Advocating for open information for the betterment of society.

This neat little definition encompasses more than you’d expect. Black hat hacking is often explained away as noble, but if that part of the definition does not apply they certainly see the digital systems around us as flexible. White hat hacking recognizes the power of the pentester and hires them for that purpose. Urban exploration, or "hacking" as it is often still known, sees buildings as physical systems vulnerable to a smart individual. And of course hackathons empower the individual to make software that bends the rules, introduces new ideas. Every hackathon project, scrappy as it might be, sends a signal to the larger digital ecosystem that there’s new potential to change this system we call society.

So the changes made to APIs as of late concern me. With the closing of free tiers for Twitter and Reddit’s APIs, both important social media platforms that tend to be first to the news, an important source of creativity and innovation has been restricted to already established players. We deserve to have open APIs.

link The Talk

The talk, which you can see on the SCaLE website, primarily concerns 4 key ideas that API developers should think about. The way I’d summarize is If you can make a fully-featured custom client of your service, it’s a good API. As most of the audience members are used to treating "hackers" as adversaries getting at your stakeholders, I hoped to introduce the idea that these people are potential users who see the value in your service but aren’t satisfied.

Please enjoy my first talk at a conference! And please consider some of the ideas presented there.

Modern day APIs sometimes feel like demos for the main product, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Developers continue to push boundaries, creating innovative sources of data that inspire creative new projects.

In this talk, Addison Hart (https://tgrcode.com/), a hobbyist reverse engineer and data scientist with extensive experience in geospatial, transit, and video game APIs, will share his insights on building quality APIs that can make a real-world impact.

His most well-known project is the Public Mario Maker 2 API (https://tgrcode.com/posts/mario_maker_2_api), designed for Nintendo’s custom-content Switch game, Mario Maker 2. With a thriving community of players and developers eager to explore the game on new levels, Addison released this API to encourage creative uses of the game and enhance the competitive scene with a level viewer. His experience building and running this API, along with observing community feedback, has shaped the ideas he presents in this talk.

In short, this talk sees APIs as the execution of 4 ideas, each of which is integral.

link 1. Latency

Latency is crucial for any application’s user experience, but especially so for APIs aiming to open up new possibilities. APIs that deliver near real-time information enable many more use cases than those that don’t. Addison will cover why latency is essential, share common pitfalls in creating intensive endpoints, and demonstrate ways to address these challenges.

link 2. Quantity

API developers sometimes make the mistake of serving too little or too much data from an endpoint. Addison will discuss how an API must serve 2 different kinds of users, average and advanced, and each of them are important to please. He will discuss how a good API can be "progressively upgraded" to serve both, with neither being impacted. In addition, he will describe solutions seen both in the wild and implemented in successful public APIs as well as performance problems faced by exposing all information possible from an endpoint.

link 3. Coverage

The primary reason APIs sometimes feel like demos for a larger product is that developers fail to include critical endpoints that tie everything together. Addison will explain how missing endpoints lead to frustration for users and limit community-driven tools. He’ll also discuss the importance of "cross-references" in the larger ecosystem and share strategies for responding to feedback on missing endpoints.

link 4. Quality

An API that excels in latency, quantity, and coverage still needs to be easy for developers to use. Addison will discuss best practices for self-documenting APIs, appropriate data formats, and responding proactively to potential user issues. He will also highlight effective documentation strategies to improve the developer experience.

Finally, Addison will showcase examples of well-executed APIs that have surprising social impact. Expect a talk that will inspire you with the exciting potential that can come from well-designed code!