https://medium.com/@sharonyun/a-dummys-guide-to-using-a-third-party-api-with-a-react-native-app-76b537190fd6 > First, what the heck is a third party API? > This was one of the first questions I asked my instructors during office hours when I started at The Grace Hopper Program at Fullstack. Even before jumping into programming, I’ve heard the phrase “API” before. I knew tech giants like Facebook and Twitter had an API and that API stood for Application Programming Interface. But what did that even mean?