Idan Gazit goes a little overboard over one piece of bad documentation for the Twitter API. The core of the issue is solid: bad docs make using APIs needlessly difficult and can be extremely frustrating for developers. This does not mean Twitter has universal “poor practices” as the title purports. At least the API works.
One important thing that I’d like to call out to anyone thinking of taking a dependency on an API. The first thing you should consider when using an API is, “Does the company I’m relying on need this API to be successful to sustain their business?” If your business interests are not aligned, the risk is very high and you’re likely to encounter a bad experience and most likely a maintenance nightmare.
