Need for Speed (and Laughs!): Humorie’s Blackbird Hackathon Success Story

Blackbird vs Gravitee: From Idea to Deployment in 3 Minutes

At this year’s API World Hackathon, teams from all over brought their skills, creativity, and grit to tackle challenges and showcase what’s possible with modern API development tools. One of our challenges was to show how quickly a team could be a quality API both using Blackbird (the API development platform) and another tool of their choice, ideally organically highlighting the rapid acceleration that Blackbird brings to the development game.

Gravitee vs. Blackbird

One of the winning Blackbird-powered teams that blew us away in the “Blackbird for Speed” challenge was the Humorie team. They set out to create a humor API that would deliver funny quotes to users—and they achieved this with Blackbird in record time (3 minutes) compared to using Gravitee (another popular API management tool that took over 30 minutes). We could all use a little more humor in the world–and the Humorie team not only put a smile on everyone’s faces but also showed just how much API innovation can be accelerated with the right toolset.

Challenge Accepted: Building a Killer API in Minutes

The Humorie team set a goal to build an API capable of delivering humorous quotes to anyone in need of a quick laugh. With a single set of commands, Blackbird allowed them to do it all: build, mock, configure, and even deploy the API—complete with custom code generation in Go. Here are some of their highlights from the building process:

• Quick Setup: From logging into Blackbird to creating the API, the team was up and running in just 3 minutes.
• Mocking & Testing: Using Blackbird’s mock create and mock config commands, they easily set up and tested the API in seconds.
• Custom Code Generation: With Blackbird’s handy code generate command, they generated Go-based code for the API, further contributing to their need for speed
• Rapid Deployment: In a few commands, they deployed and verified the humor API, all in Blackbird’s dedicated environment.

“Like any hackathon, this project came with a learning curve. Using both Blackbird and Gravitee for the first time presented a few challenges, but our team persevered, gaining valuable experience with two different API creation platforms,” shared the Humorie team. “And–Ultimately, we delivered a working API on both and had fun doing it.”

Comparing 10x Speed: Blackbird vs. Gravitee

To demonstrate the speed advantage, the Humorie team then built the exact same API using the API management tool, Gravitee. The Gravitee setup and deployment took them over 30 minutes—a stark contrast to Blackbird’s speedy 3-minute deployment. This speed difference gave Blackbird a clear edge, allowing them more time for additional development and improvements, showing that Blackbird truly is 10 times faster than other API development tools.

If you won’t take our word for it, watch Humorie’s full-screen recorded video of building their process below.

The Future is Humorous

Encouraged by Blackbird’s efficiency, the team plans to enhance the Humorie API further post-win by ideally adding more features using Blackbird’s advanced capabilities, which they now feel confident navigating. For teams looking to optimize API creation without sacrificing quality, Blackbird proves that speed can go hand-in-hand with robust functionality.

And before we sign off, it’s only fair we end with a joke or two of our favorite API puns. ;)

Why did the API break up with the frontend? Because it kept sending mixed signals.

Why was the API always so calm? Because it handled requests like a pro.

What’s an API’s favorite type of music? Anything with RESTful beats.

That’s all for now, folks! Give Blackbird a try for yourself with our free trial option.