Five years of GraphQL 🎉

2020 will mark five years since GraphQL was released!

To celebrate, we asked some of the usual suspects 😎 in the community, including Lee Byron, co-creator of GraphQL, to reflect on their journey, and where GraphQL is headed next.

Takeaways

GraphQL is more than just a tool: it changes how teams communicate. It empowers developers to request for the data they want, reducing their dependency and communication overhead with API teams. It thrives on community and collaboration.
GraphiQL rocks: it’s the feature people would miss the most if it went away.
🕷🕸The most popular mascot choice for GraphQL is spiders. Honorable mention: “Humans... Humans are also nice animals.” - Uri Goldshtein

We got a variety of answers for what to change about GraphQL:
- an approach to GraphQL that works well with microservices; less coupled to a monolithic design,
- a more opinionated stance on authorization, especially with the introspection schema,
- make it easy for beginners to get started,
- the ability to handle errors in the query.
- See video for more!

Among the hardest parts of using GraphQL are the need for a heavy client-side library, initial adoption, and building a good GraphQL server that leverages modern serverless and cloud native trends.
The most popular way to convince someone to migrate to GraphQL is to show them GraphiQL and get them started on the frontend. Don’t forget to tell them it’s sunny all the time, they can wear flip-flops, and the food is great!

What about you? How would you convince someone today to migrate to GraphQL? And how would you answer the other questions? Please share in the comments! And if you’d like to tweet us a video of your answers, we won’t stop you 😈