Designing APIs people do not hate
Northwind Engineering · 42:18
- 18:21 · Let me talk about the part of the API nobody designs on purpose.
- 18:42 · Rate limits are a contract. Publish the numbers, return the headers, and never change them without a version bump.
- 19:05 · The mistake we made was rate limiting by IP. Half our customers sat behind one corporate gateway.
- 19:30 · We moved to per-key limits with a burst allowance, and the support tickets stopped within a week.
- 19:58 · The other thing worth copying: a Retry-After header that tells the truth.