Hacker News Reader

Comment by shortstuffsushi | Hacker News Reader

Why would their API need to be anything more than what they offer to their app? Why not something like "hey, you can use our stuff, but you've only got access to the same set of APIs we use in our app, and we may change it as we please.

Oh btw, here are the auto-gen'd docs, hope those are enough"

That seems like it'd be both developer friendly and no more maintenance than they're already putting into it. The alternative is basically things like this, where someone figures it out anyway, and we have to wait and see if they play it cool, or take it badly and make the author take it down.

View on HN

You can't make breaking changes to a public API, for starters. Needing to maintain/version APIs you want to deprecate has a nonzero cost.

Why not? The real cost would be documenting it, but a lot of devs would be willing to accept essentially being on a mailing list for breaking changes a few weeks in advance. It's not like Starbucks can roll out breaking changes to their own API instantly.

It would only really be used by enthusiasts and techies who are used to this sort of thing.

Of course you can.

All you have to do is to say: "this is our internal API, we're releasing endpoint documentation for curious developers, but be warned, that the API may, and will, change without any notice".

I.e. when you're releasing something in the open, you don't have to take social responsibilities if you don't want to. It's not a binary choice between "release a fully supported product" and "don't release at all".

That makes me wonder, are the any commercial/consumer products that use that model?

You can't data mine users as much. You can't easily advertise specials or high margin items. Not that i think those are legitimate, but if a 3rd party app became popular and easily accessible, the company would lose the control over their perception.

You're not wrong, this does give up that sort of control. That's a different issue, but certainly a reason why they might not want to do it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com