What platforms are supported for use with the Stack Exchange API?
In short, anything that can make a GET request to the API servers and supports JSON/JSONP & GZIP. (JavaScript, Python, PHP, Java, C#, etc., etc.)
All responses from the API will be compressed with GZIP (default) or DEFLATE.
The Content-Encoding header will be set appropriately, but be aware that some proxies will strip this header (along with the corresponding Accept-Encoding header) so its presence should not be relied upon.
All returned values will be JSON encoded. The API does support the jsonp parameter for cross-domain requests.
Why is GZIP support required?
GZIP is 17 years old, and has been part of the HTTP 1.1 standard for 11 years. Its built into all modern browsers, its source is freely available, and it's a part of all popular languages/platforms.
Not GZIP'ing (more generally, compressing) wastes bandwidth, and reduces performance.
