> > we strive to do everything we possibly can to keep everything as backwards > compatible as possible -- in fact, we jump through many hoops to do it. > > maybe it's just me, but "backwards compatible" seems like a liability > rather than a benefit. attempting backwards compatibility constrains your > innovation without providing any real insulation from changes to customers. >
100%. i completely agree with you. maintaining backwards compatibility means that i can't do some of the "crazier", or, practically, some of the more "elegant" things that i really want to do on the API. but, at the same time, its really important to me that we can provide an API that is powerful and somewhat stable to our developers. we could go and start making different versions of the API, but that just means that, we'll be backwards maintaining lots of old versions. same problem. > ... but you've also missed the point. > > the point is that as the number of users of your API grows, EVERY change > you make WILL stimulate SOME bug. it just doesn't matter how careful you > are, i am, or how great my libraries are. the only hope that we have of > keeping those bugs from reaching real customers is to test the changes > before deploying. > true true. we've been trying to figure out ways to have good transition periods. what we've been doing more and more of, is trying to maintain parallel code paths for a bit that allows developers to switch between them with a header or something, to allow you all to test. "soon" we're going to be deploying a brand new oauth codepath that fixes a lot of our oauth issues, increases performance, etc., and we're going to ask you all to help us test it before we cut over to it. we're looking for opportunities to do this more often. > it pains me to hear that you all think that talking to us is like talking > to a brick wall > > each time i post to this list you respond in this way. i'm not sure what > i'm doing to provoke this feeling, but i assure you it's not what I think at > all. you guys are whatever the opposite of a brick wall is. > i apologize, i must have a gruff tone. i'm not angry. in fact i enjoy the > back and forth that we have with the API team. but i'll see if i can't just > tone it down a notch. :-P > ha! i think it was dean's comment of "Talking to twitter is like talking to a brick wall". :P -- Raffi Krikorian Twitter Platform Team http://twitter.com/raffi -- To unsubscribe, reply using "remove me" as the subject.
