Hey everyone,

I want to share a confession from years ago, back when I was just starting out with REST API design.

I thought I was being super clever and organised by designing my API endpoints around user roles. My brain went straight for /admin/... for all things admin and /customer/... for customer-related actions. Felt neat, right? 😅

Then came the inevitable moment when both admins and customers needed to interact with the same data (users, for example), and my perfectly segmented system crumbled fast. 🤦‍♂️

That's when the lightbulb finally went off: resource-based RESTful design isn't about who is accessing the data, it's fundamentally about the data itself. This simple but profound shift saved me from countless headaches and taught me a crucial lesson in API architecture.

Instead of having separate, duplicated logic, focusing on resources like /users, /products, and /orders, and then implementing proper authentication and authorisation to control access based on roles, made everything so much cleaner and more maintainable.

Anyone else have a similar early "a-ha!" moment in their dev journey? What's a mistake you made that ended up teaching you a valuable lesson? Share your stories below! 👇