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good amount of comments here missing how hard it is for "normal" people to use twilio. the article is clear: twilio's many interface to your code is a callback

good amount of comments here missing how hard it is for "normal" people to use twilio. the article is clear: twilio's many interface to your code is a callback URL. think about what it takes to have a callback URL you can input to the twilio website. could they really set up an AWS account, lambda function, IAM role, API gateway, with cloud watch logs? ive done this in AWS. you have to use 5+ AWS services that have funny names and look nothing alike, and make them all work together. or lets say you wanted to buy a domain, hosting for it, and put your code on there for twilio to hit with a callback URL. thats hard too. if you are going to do either of the 2 approaches above, how many hours are you going to spend getting the callback URL foundation set up (and working) before you even get to use a twilio product?

Mister_Snuggles 9y ago
Can the callback URL use an IP address, or does it need to be a proper DNS name? Can it have a self-signed certificate? Does it even need to be secured? If the callback URL can use an IP address and doesn't require https, you could set up a Digital Ocean droplet for it in a couple of minutes. Or you could set up a port-forward on your router and run an HTTP server on your machine, but I think the Digital Ocean route might be quicker.
- foolfoolz 9y ago
  who are you expecting to understand this? there's tons of people out there who have no idea what these terms mean. DNS? Self Signed? IP address maybe... droplet? they are going to say "too hard, close tab"
  - Mister_Snuggles 9y ago
    At a quick glance, it seems like anything beyond a fire-and-forget SMS/fax done with Twilio requires a callback. My guess is that Twilio is expecting their customers to be able to write a callback and is willing to accept the associated barriers for entry.
- atomicUpdate 9y ago
  > Or you could set up a port-forward on your router and run an HTTP server on your machine This, coupled with just giving them a raw IP address has been good enough for me so far.
biot 9y ago
A counterpoint is that "normal" people should not be doing any of that at all. While I'm 100% in favor of making things easier for developers, you have to know what you're doing otherwise the easiest interface in the world will result in some "normal" people releasing a service which allows malicious users to abuse the service and rack up unlimited charges, potentially using it to harass unsuspecting victims with hundreds of calls per hour at 3 AM, for example. If callback URLs, SSL, etc. are difficult to understand, I consider that a sufficient barrier which requires people to have a clue about what they're building and understand the implications of their choices.
- robbiemitchell 9y ago
  Can Glitch help here? https://glitch.com/ https://glitch.com/

Mister_Snuggles 9y ago

Can the callback URL use an IP address, or does it need to be a proper DNS name? Can it have a self-signed certificate? Does it even need to be secured? If the callback URL can use an IP address and doesn't require https, you could set up a Digital Ocean droplet for it in a couple of minutes. Or you could set up a port-forward on your router and run an HTTP server on your machine, but I think the Digital Ocean route might be quicker.

foolfoolz 9y ago
who are you expecting to understand this? there's tons of people out there who have no idea what these terms mean. DNS? Self Signed? IP address maybe... droplet? they are going to say "too hard, close tab"
- Mister_Snuggles 9y ago
  At a quick glance, it seems like anything beyond a fire-and-forget SMS/fax done with Twilio requires a callback. My guess is that Twilio is expecting their customers to be able to write a callback and is willing to accept the associated barriers for entry.
atomicUpdate 9y ago
> Or you could set up a port-forward on your router and run an HTTP server on your machine This, coupled with just giving them a raw IP address has been good enough for me so far.

biot 9y ago

A counterpoint is that "normal" people should not be doing any of that at all. While I'm 100% in favor of making things easier for developers, you have to know what you're doing otherwise the easiest interface in the world will result in some "normal" people releasing a service which allows malicious users to abuse the service and rack up unlimited charges, potentially using it to harass unsuspecting victims with hundreds of calls per hour at 3 AM, for example. If callback URLs, SSL, etc. are difficult to understand, I consider that a sufficient barrier which requires people to have a clue about what they're building and understand the implications of their choices.

robbiemitchell 9y ago
Can Glitch help here? https://glitch.com/ https://glitch.com/