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Years ago I worked on Google Maps, we spent an inordinate amount of time making sure that we didn't break backwards compatibility. Sometimes we would be trying
by inoffensivename 6y ago
Years ago I worked on Google Maps, we spent an inordinate amount of time making sure that we didn't break backwards compatibility. Sometimes we would be trying to refactor some old code, but we'd get stuck trying to support some ancient client that was sending us like 4 requests a day with some wacky query parameters.
On the other hand, our Maps still worked on all 5 Blackberries that people were still using.
- jooize 6y agoWere there different user agents or did all clients have to use the same interface?
- mattmanser 6y agoErr, from a user perspective you actually spent an inordinate amount of time changing things for the sake of it. It was really annoying. Google APIs have always been some of the worst. It honestly felt like ever time I had to use the maps API for a client, you'd changed the whole thing.
- inoffensivename 6y agoYeah, I think people felt less compunction changing the published APIs. I was talking about the "internal" APIs, especially the tile API which still serves ancient clients.
- disgruntledphd2 6y agoThat is an extremely strange order of priorities, right?
- mschuster91 6y agoProbably because the "internal" API was used by someone who paid a lot of dollars?
- hyperdimension 6y agoJust in case anyone's curious: there's still at least one BlackBerry user. I'm surprised AT&T haven't shut off the BIS gateway yet, but at least HN loads on this thing. Edit: Thank you, though, for your effort. I'm not sure if it still works, but I did use the Google Maps client for some time, loaded one .cod file at a time... -- written from my Bold 9900
- bacondude3 6y agoRelevant: https://www.tnhh.net/posts/google-maps-insane-backward-compatibility.html https://www.tnhh.net/posts/google-maps-insane-backward-compa...