Company
Date Published
Author
Alex MacCaw
Word count
316
Language
English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

The text discusses the challenges and strategies involved in encouraging customers to upgrade from older versions of APIs to newer ones, due to the necessity of making backwards incompatible changes. The company employs a date-based API versioning system, which results in many customers using outdated versions and missing out on new features. Various methods have been tested to encourage upgrades, including email notifications about new features, though these are often ineffective as they can be easily ignored. Documentation only reflects the latest API version, leading to confusion for those on older versions, which prompted the inclusion of conspicuous warnings in the documentation. A more direct approach involves the X-API-Warn header, which notifies users through server logs when they are using deprecated API versions, encouraging them to upgrade. The company is open to suggestions for more effective solutions and invites interested individuals to join their Slack room or consider working with them.