What’s your API’s “Time To 200”? • Hacker News Board

Re: What’s your API’s “Time To 200”?

#21

Post by vmception » Sat, May 22, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

Reminds me about that time last year a cloud compute provider didnt even have an automated sign up process

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22940781

I said its surprising how much breath the sales engineer is wasting given how coveted a continual flow of oxygen is now. I was being facetious in April 2020 but who knew how insensitive that would become!

Re: What’s your API’s “Time To 200”?

#22

Post by edent » Sat, May 22, 2021, 5:36 PM UTC

thecodemonkey wrote: post #8

I like to think that we’re doing okay with geocod.io, but I would seriously love some feedback. Should we automatically generate your first API key? Make docs more prominent? Anything else?

The demo link is a good start - but it would be nice to have the JSON output pretty-printed.

I'm not sure that the first thing I should see in the documentation is the changelog.

But, other than that, I like it. If you offered UK/EU geocoding, I'd use it :-)

Re: What’s your API’s “Time To 200”?

#23

Post by robalfonso » Sat, May 22, 2021, 5:42 PM UTC

jasonhansel wrote: post #20

Personally, few things annoy me more than APIs that can only be accessed via an SDK, and can't easily be called through e.g. cURL.

I seriously discount your api if I can't do my initial review via curl. As the author stated, having to do all this setup creates friction, your api is supposed to be solving a problem for me. If it just creates different problems you're not offering a good solution. If I can quickly see how it works via curl it will be that much easier to evaluate.

Re: What’s your API’s “Time To 200”?

#24

Post by Spivak » Sat, May 22, 2021, 5:42 PM UTC

jasonhansel wrote: post #20

Personally, few things annoy me more than APIs that can only be accessed via an SDK, and can't easily be called through e.g. cURL.

Looking at you literally all of AWS.

Re: What’s your API’s “Time To 200”?

#25

Post by 256DEV » Sat, May 22, 2021, 5:42 PM UTC

I've put a fair amount of work into getting this exact time as low as possible for my exchange rates API [1]. I've noticed slightly better conversion each time I've taken a major step out of the process.

I've specifically eliminated some of the steps this article cites in its example of a tedious flow - for instance I changed user accounts to be confirmed by default and then only disable them retroactively if a user doesn't click the activation link within 24 hours. This way you don't need to wait for the confirmation email. Even though I use Postmark delivery times can be surprisingly variable.

I'm not sure how I could further improve the current flow, which is 1. put your email into the landing page, 2. then choose a password for your account, then 3. you're presented with an example request format including your already activated API key. Suggestions welcome!

I guess because the scope of my service is so limited it's easy to have this fast flow, no complex libraries or auth is involved.

1. https://www.exchangerate-api.com

Re: What’s your API’s “Time To 200”?

#26

Post by aszen » Sat, May 22, 2021, 5:43 PM UTC

jasonhansel wrote: post #20

Personally, few things annoy me more than APIs that can only be accessed via an SDK, and can't easily be called through e.g. cURL.

famous example of this, are most of the aws api's that because of their signing features and hashes can really only be called sanely from an sdk.

such a pain to debug, i'm not sure why they have such signing features. is it for security

Re: What’s your API’s “Time To 200”?

#27

Post by [deleted] » Sat, May 22, 2021, 5:47 PM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #24

jasonhansel wrote: post #20

Personally, few things annoy me more than APIs that can only be accessed via an SDK, and can't easily be called through e.g. cURL.

Looking at you literally all of AWS .

[deleted]

Re: What’s your API’s “Time To 200”?

#28

Post by treve » Sat, May 22, 2021, 5:47 PM UTC

jasonhansel wrote: post #20

Personally, few things annoy me more than APIs that can only be accessed via an SDK, and can't easily be called through e.g. cURL.

Or even better: allow me to paste the url in a browser and get a meaningful result.

Re: What’s your API’s “Time To 200”?

#29

Post by thecodemonkey » Sat, May 22, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

edent wrote: post #22

thecodemonkey wrote: post #8

I like to think that we’re doing okay with geocod.io, but I would seriously love some feedback. Should we automatically generate your first API key? Make docs more prominent? Anything else?

The demo link is a good start - but it would be nice to have the JSON output pretty-printed. I'm not sure that the first thing I should see in the documentation is the changelog. But, other than that, I like it. If you offered UK/EU geocoding, I'd use it :-)

Thanks so much for the feedback! I've considered checking the User Agent and rendering pretty-printed JSON if e.g. a webbrowser is used, but I am a bit worried that UA-dependent behavior could be confusing. Perhaps the downside to always rendering pretty-printed JSON is minimal? Would love some thoughts on this.

Good call on the changelog being front and center, moving it a bit further down now.

Thanks! UK/EU geocoding may or may not happen in the future :)

Re: What’s your API’s “Time To 200”?

#30

Post by [deleted] » Sat, May 22, 2021, 5:53 PM UTC

[deleted]