5 ms·

How patio11 builds Twilio apps

103 points by gregorymichael 12y ago

hawkice 12y ago
Great piece. More B2B companies should offer customers promotion in exchange for stories of how useful their product is. Major win-win. And of course 'patio11 is doing odd and clever things with twilio aside from his business. :) Minor nitpick: Incorrectly states he's the highest karma user of HN, when 'tptacek has almost double his karma, and pg is #2 even though he's not on the list of high-karma users.
- gregorymichael 12y ago
  Haha. I knew someone was going to call me out on that -- tried to phrase his HN status succinctly and came up ambiguous. I was looking at the average rating on the top 10 list, but you're absolutely right that a couple folks have more gross karma. Semantics matter. Thanks for pointing that out. And thank you too for the compliments.
sdrothrock 12y ago
> I'm generally pretty happy with Twilio's responsiveness to everything over the last couple years. I have to disagree with this. I've had a number of problems with both Twilio's customer support (failing to simply explain how to do something when I stated what I was trying to do) and also with their technical support (completely abandoning me for a week despite me immediately following up with what they'd requested and then asking for status updates).
- qq66 12y ago
  There are at least two possible explanations: 1) Customer service response is highly variable 2) Twilio (like any company) is extra-responsive to customers who have a large audience on the Internet
  - sdrothrock 12y ago
    Of course, and I completely agree. I'm just trying to provide a contrasting opinion from a normal user who doesn't have a huge internet audience.
- gregorymichael 12y ago
  OP here. I'm so sorry to hear that we let you down like that. Totally not what we're striving for. Wouldn't be surprised if you've moved on after an experience like that, but if you need any help from us in the future and you're not getting what you need, please feel free to reach out to me directly (gb@twilio.com).
  - sdrothrock 12y ago
    Thank you, and I appreciate it. If I get abandoned again in the future, you'll be the first person I contact.
curiously 12y ago
twilio is great but the toll free number is seriously expensive. the android client is a joke and you can't use it to answer or make calls. what twilio needs is an official skype like app.
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  Twilio is built for integrations, not end users.
- taf2 12y ago
  We use the android and iOS clients to make calls - it works really well.
  - curiously 12y ago
    I get reports of voice echoing.
Animats 12y ago
Twilio is useful, and not too expensive. It's most useful for SMS input, since it doesn't understand voice; it just records it. I just use it for a fun application; I have it connected to a 1930s Teletype machine at steampunk conventions, so people can send in telegrams to be hand-delivered. Inbound SMS is still limited to 160 characters; Twilio can't reassemble a multipart SMS message, or give the user enough info to do so. Nexmo, a competitor, can handle multipart inbound SMS. I wish Twilio would catch up in that area.
- ezequiel-garzon 12y ago
  I didn't know teletype machines were that old. By any chance, do you happen to have a video available?
  - SiVal 12y ago
    Many technologies are older than people think. Fax machines, for example, have been in use by the US military since the Civil War.
  - Animats 12y ago
    https://vimeo.com/97062822 https://vimeo.com/97062822 - https://archive.org/details/Aethericnovaalbiion2011 https://archive.org/details/Aethericnovaalbiion2011 https://archive.org/details/Aethericmachine14 https://archive.org/details/Aethericmachine14 http://www.aetherltd.com/refurbishing.html http://www.aetherltd.com/refurbishing.html Those are some of my machines. Those machines were built between 1924 and 1944. There are older printing telegraph machines, back all the way to 1852, but the Model 14 from 1924 was the first one that "just worked". So hundreds of thousands were produced, and many are still around. If you want an old Teletype, there are usually some on eBay.
    - ezequiel-garzon 12y ago
      Thanks for such a thorough reply. I'm sorry I just saw it now, 9 days later. Thanks again.
- 12y ago
sleazebreeze 12y ago
I loved the in depth discussion of his process for making the app more stable. Is there any other good articles or books about making applications more stable and reliable against hard failure?
simonebrunozzi 12y ago
Waiting for patio11 to show up here :)
Artemis2 12y ago
Very nicely written article, a good PR piece! I'm just curious about how much patio11 was paid by Twilio for that.
- patio11 12y ago
  A potbelly sandwich and a bag of chips. I get rather substantially more monetary consideration from Chase Bank as a consequence of my relationship with Twilio than I do from Twilio. (I spend +/- $7k per year on Twilio, so 1% CC rewards is $70 cash money. Chase clearly has me on the take!) Seriously, though: I've never taken money for promotion from anybody. That's not my business model, which is straightforward: mostly, I sell software to businesses for money. It's not terribly difficult to get me to write or speak for free, since I love writing and speaking about geeky subjects, as evidenced by about 2 million words on my blog or HN comments.
  - Artemis2 12y ago
    Thank you for answering, I was genuinely curious, this feels like you put a lot of work in it.
- hga 12y ago
  Based on my much less intense use of Twilio, they wouldn't have to pay me a cent to get me to write a glowing article like this. They're really good, their documentation is very useful and crystal clear, all I needed to get my code working, and their system just plain works. (Again, in my much more limited use of it.)
jerguismi 12y ago
We use both nexmo and twilio, and I prefer the nexmo. Better coverage, features etc.
davidw 12y ago
Reliability, FSM's... Erlang might be a good fit for people working with Twilio - I wonder if there's any kind of API though. Sounds like fun though - there's something cool about doing stuff in the "real world" beyond the screen that is somehow satisfying.
- Jtsummers 12y ago
  Here [0] are a list of Twilio libraries. I used the erlang one a couple years ago for a pretty basic application, similar to patio11's. I was traveling to Canada for a couple weeks and picked up a pre-paid SIM. I set up my primary phone to forward to my twilio number which in turn connected to my temporary number. Pretty unnecessary (I received no calls, and often forgot my phone at the house I was staying it), but a good learning exercise. The erlang library is at [1]. It doesn't look like it's been touched in a while, though. I've also not touched Twilio since then so I have no clue if that's an issue or not. Though I'll probably use a similar setup for a longer trip planned for this summer so maybe I should track down that code. [0] http://www.twilio.com/docs/libraries http://www.twilio.com/docs/libraries [1] https://github.com/huffman/twilio_erlang https://github.com/huffman/twilio_erlang
JonoBB 12y ago
>Someone could be logging in to their dashboard and the web service basically is like, “Well sure, I’ll serve up your dashboard HTML at the moment, but I got to send these phone calls out right now so you’re going to wait.” Why not just use a push queue like iron.io so that it doesn't block http at all?
- lmm 12y ago
  More moving parts, more points of failure, async queues make problems much harder to debug (you no longer have a "stack trace" that tells you where your bad data came from, you just know it came off the queue like that). Async queues have advantages for many problems but they don't come for free.
  - JonoBB 12y ago
    Sure, but those are in most cases easily surmountable, and the advantages in this case sound somewhat higher than the downsides. Who knows...except @patio11.
mikelbring 12y ago
Whats the best way to insert <Say> in a <Play>, splitting the mp3 up?
- taf2 12y ago
  You'd have to split the mp3 on your end. then it's simple just: <Say>message</Say> <Play>part1.mp3</Play> <Say>message</Say> <Play>part2.mp3</Play> ... etc... But I could be missing the point of your question?
  - mikelbring 12y ago
    That's what I feared. Didn't know if there was a way to do like a delayed <Say> into a <Play>

103 points by gregorymichael 12y ago

Great piece. More B2B companies should offer customers promotion in exchange for stories of how useful their product is. Major win-win. And of course 'patio11 is doing odd and clever things with twilio aside from his business. :) Minor nitpick: Incorrectly states he's the highest karma user of HN, when 'tptacek has almost double his karma, and pg is #2 even though he's not on the list of high-karma users.

gregorymichael 12y ago
Haha. I knew someone was going to call me out on that -- tried to phrase his HN status succinctly and came up ambiguous. I was looking at the average rating on the top 10 list, but you're absolutely right that a couple folks have more gross karma. Semantics matter. Thanks for pointing that out. And thank you too for the compliments.

sdrothrock 12y ago

> I'm generally pretty happy with Twilio's responsiveness to everything over the last couple years. I have to disagree with this. I've had a number of problems with both Twilio's customer support (failing to simply explain how to do something when I stated what I was trying to do) and also with their technical support (completely abandoning me for a week despite me immediately following up with what they'd requested and then asking for status updates).

qq66 12y ago
There are at least two possible explanations: 1) Customer service response is highly variable 2) Twilio (like any company) is extra-responsive to customers who have a large audience on the Internet
- sdrothrock 12y ago
  Of course, and I completely agree. I'm just trying to provide a contrasting opinion from a normal user who doesn't have a huge internet audience.
gregorymichael 12y ago
OP here. I'm so sorry to hear that we let you down like that. Totally not what we're striving for. Wouldn't be surprised if you've moved on after an experience like that, but if you need any help from us in the future and you're not getting what you need, please feel free to reach out to me directly (gb@twilio.com).
- sdrothrock 12y ago
  Thank you, and I appreciate it. If I get abandoned again in the future, you'll be the first person I contact.

curiously 12y ago

twilio is great but the toll free number is seriously expensive. the android client is a joke and you can't use it to answer or make calls. what twilio needs is an official skype like app.

toomuchtodo 12y ago
Twilio is built for integrations, not end users.
taf2 12y ago
We use the android and iOS clients to make calls - it works really well.
- curiously 12y ago
  I get reports of voice echoing.

Animats 12y ago

Twilio is useful, and not too expensive. It's most useful for SMS input, since it doesn't understand voice; it just records it. I just use it for a fun application; I have it connected to a 1930s Teletype machine at steampunk conventions, so people can send in telegrams to be hand-delivered. Inbound SMS is still limited to 160 characters; Twilio can't reassemble a multipart SMS message, or give the user enough info to do so. Nexmo, a competitor, can handle multipart inbound SMS. I wish Twilio would catch up in that area.

ezequiel-garzon 12y ago
I didn't know teletype machines were that old. By any chance, do you happen to have a video available?
- SiVal 12y ago
  Many technologies are older than people think. Fax machines, for example, have been in use by the US military since the Civil War.
- Animats 12y ago
  https://vimeo.com/97062822 https://vimeo.com/97062822 - https://archive.org/details/Aethericnovaalbiion2011 https://archive.org/details/Aethericnovaalbiion2011 https://archive.org/details/Aethericmachine14 https://archive.org/details/Aethericmachine14 http://www.aetherltd.com/refurbishing.html http://www.aetherltd.com/refurbishing.html Those are some of my machines. Those machines were built between 1924 and 1944. There are older printing telegraph machines, back all the way to 1852, but the Model 14 from 1924 was the first one that "just worked". So hundreds of thousands were produced, and many are still around. If you want an old Teletype, there are usually some on eBay.
  - ezequiel-garzon 12y ago
    Thanks for such a thorough reply. I'm sorry I just saw it now, 9 days later. Thanks again.
12y ago

sleazebreeze 12y ago

I loved the in depth discussion of his process for making the app more stable. Is there any other good articles or books about making applications more stable and reliable against hard failure?

simonebrunozzi 12y ago

Waiting for patio11 to show up here :)

Artemis2 12y ago

Very nicely written article, a good PR piece! I'm just curious about how much patio11 was paid by Twilio for that.

patio11 12y ago
A potbelly sandwich and a bag of chips. I get rather substantially more monetary consideration from Chase Bank as a consequence of my relationship with Twilio than I do from Twilio. (I spend +/- $7k per year on Twilio, so 1% CC rewards is $70 cash money. Chase clearly has me on the take!) Seriously, though: I've never taken money for promotion from anybody. That's not my business model, which is straightforward: mostly, I sell software to businesses for money. It's not terribly difficult to get me to write or speak for free, since I love writing and speaking about geeky subjects, as evidenced by about 2 million words on my blog or HN comments.
- Artemis2 12y ago
  Thank you for answering, I was genuinely curious, this feels like you put a lot of work in it.
hga 12y ago
Based on my much less intense use of Twilio, they wouldn't have to pay me a cent to get me to write a glowing article like this. They're really good, their documentation is very useful and crystal clear, all I needed to get my code working, and their system just plain works. (Again, in my much more limited use of it.)

jerguismi 12y ago

We use both nexmo and twilio, and I prefer the nexmo. Better coverage, features etc.

davidw 12y ago

Reliability, FSM's... Erlang might be a good fit for people working with Twilio - I wonder if there's any kind of API though. Sounds like fun though - there's something cool about doing stuff in the "real world" beyond the screen that is somehow satisfying.

Jtsummers 12y ago
Here [0] are a list of Twilio libraries. I used the erlang one a couple years ago for a pretty basic application, similar to patio11's. I was traveling to Canada for a couple weeks and picked up a pre-paid SIM. I set up my primary phone to forward to my twilio number which in turn connected to my temporary number. Pretty unnecessary (I received no calls, and often forgot my phone at the house I was staying it), but a good learning exercise. The erlang library is at [1]. It doesn't look like it's been touched in a while, though. I've also not touched Twilio since then so I have no clue if that's an issue or not. Though I'll probably use a similar setup for a longer trip planned for this summer so maybe I should track down that code. [0] http://www.twilio.com/docs/libraries http://www.twilio.com/docs/libraries [1] https://github.com/huffman/twilio_erlang https://github.com/huffman/twilio_erlang

JonoBB 12y ago

>Someone could be logging in to their dashboard and the web service basically is like, “Well sure, I’ll serve up your dashboard HTML at the moment, but I got to send these phone calls out right now so you’re going to wait.” Why not just use a push queue like iron.io so that it doesn't block http at all?

lmm 12y ago
More moving parts, more points of failure, async queues make problems much harder to debug (you no longer have a "stack trace" that tells you where your bad data came from, you just know it came off the queue like that). Async queues have advantages for many problems but they don't come for free.
- JonoBB 12y ago
  Sure, but those are in most cases easily surmountable, and the advantages in this case sound somewhat higher than the downsides. Who knows...except @patio11.

mikelbring 12y ago

Whats the best way to insert <Say> in a <Play>, splitting the mp3 up?

taf2 12y ago
You'd have to split the mp3 on your end. then it's simple just: <Say>message</Say> <Play>part1.mp3</Play> <Say>message</Say> <Play>part2.mp3</Play> ... etc... But I could be missing the point of your question?
- mikelbring 12y ago
  That's what I feared. Didn't know if there was a way to do like a delayed <Say> into a <Play>