APIs are basically the glue of modern tech—front end, back end, middleware… you’re going to touch APIs in some way. In this video I walk through one of the most essential tools I use as a backend engineer to work with APIs: Postman. I’ve used it pretty much every day for the last 8 years to test, share, and document API requests, and it makes the whole process way less painful when you’re trying to validate that an endpoint does what you think it does. I start from the very beginning: downloading the right Postman installer (Apple Silicon vs Intel vs Windows), creating a free account, and then making a simple HTTP GET request to the JSONPlaceholder API. We hit the /posts route, send the request, and I show you how to read the response—body, headers, status code (200 = success), timing, and payload size. Then I save the request into a collection so it’s easy to rerun while you’re testing or integrating with a client like a web app, mobile app, or even an IoT device. If you’re a student, I also point you to the Postman Student Program because it’s free and project-based, which is my favorite way to learn.