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Comment by bobwaycott | Hacker News Reader

Is it really misleading? Where did you expect the integration with banks to come from? It doesn't even seem like a remote possibility that could be provided without using/including a library from someone. Now one is able to integrate this functionality as easily as one might add Stripe checkout. That's a win, isn't it?

This library aside, I've grown accustomed to every "Do complex thing X in a few lines of code" announcement to, as a rule, mean "as long as you're using our sparkly new library." So much so that it seems rather silly to even mention a library is required. Of course it is. The hard work was wrapped up into a nice interface for everyone to use.

As much as I've grown tired of the automatic developer default to include third-party libraries to do everything, things such as financial transactions seem like one area where it's unlikely one will ever be able to do anything without libraries in a few lines of code.

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Agreed with your comment and I'd like to extend it.

It's worth pointing out here that every practical hello world program that I'm aware of invokes thousands of lines of library code beneath it (many years ago I was agog when looking at printf source code). Let's skip any talk of how python or ruby are only a few lines of code :)

Maybe you are too smart for that, write it in assembly! Just a few opcodes and some other dark magic. Well then there's an operating system you invoke. But wait, even if you got around all of that, there are thousands of lines of RTL code that created your CPU, i.e. an entire and much more obscure library stack sitting beneath all of that.

So yeah, you are sitting at some of level of abstraction in the technology stack, and your responsibility should just be a few lines of code ;) I am always blown away at how much leverage we have now (for example, am still just enamored with rails, regardless of any further refinements in the arena, it is still simply amazing to me), just compared to a few years ago, and it keeps getting more powerful.

I think your criticism is a little off the mark.

The integration with banks happens on Dwolla's servers, not in any client libraries they may offer.

This library in question is just a thin wrapper around validation and AJAX for talking to Dwolla's HTTP API.

The code for a Dwolla API consumer to make a bank transfer could be just a few lines, without any libraries, which is what I was expecting to see, not that this demo isn't cool too. Showing off that your API is so straightforward you don't need a client library to use it would be good marketing to me.

Here's an example from another payments startup that used to make similar posts on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5026802

I was always super impressed with Balanced and the way they communicated with developers.

I think calling this title misleading is more than a bit off the mark. Any competent developer should be able to achieve a few lines of code talking to APIs without a library. I also don't consider a curl command to be a line of code anymore than I consider an ls or rsync command to be a line of code.

That a post doesn't meet a reader's expectations doesn't in any way mean the post is being misleading. Unless, of course, they'd added some additional language to the title to imply they weren't talking about using their tools. Which almost never happens on HN.

Yes, I do find the title to be misleading.

Pure checksum verification (used for some account number plausibility checks) can actually be done in a couple of lines of code. This is something different entirely.

Please don't get me wrong - this doesn't mean I don't appreciate the library. I just think adding "with our library" wouldn't have hurt.

Of course, "account number plausibility" != account verification.

You are correct. Guess I read too much into "verification".

Pure checksum verification would hardly be something worth posting.

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