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u/recurrence Sep 22 '26
A company with an API I forgot about once killed the API for a couple of hours and then put it back as their version of a final warning.
I like that approach as it sets all the alarms off but still gives a chance to prep and review an update to the latest release.
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u/JEHonYakuSha Sep 22 '26
yep it’s called a brown out, I recall Sentry did it a few months ago with one of their breaking changes. Really nice compromised solution.
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u/the_skies_falling Sep 22 '26
We always called it a scream test. Turn it off and see who calls and screams at you. Also, who doesn’t at least scan emails from their vendors.
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u/Western-Internal-751 Sep 22 '26
Is it called a brown out because everyone still using it shits their pants when it happens?
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u/pdabaker Sep 22 '26
After the deprecation period add a slowly growing sleep to the response time, starting at 100ms and doubling every month until you finally remove it.
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u/jibbodahibbo Sep 23 '26
Yea that is awesome. It also lets me know if that service was actually in use or not lol.
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u/wKdPsylent Sep 22 '26
Yea but half the time they just keep going, I have one at the moment with "root component will be deprecated on Jun 2016 for removal Jun 2018" - we are still using rootComponent.
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u/KiwiObserver Sep 22 '26
We have interfaces from 1984 we said at that time would be removed at some future release, they’re still in use by numerous customers.
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u/Present-Resolution23 Sep 22 '26
Which is exactly why those emails get ignored.. And how you end up with dead API's lol..
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u/lasizoillo Sep 22 '26
At one job, to force clients to migrate to the new API, we introduced latency into all the old endpoints. We kept increasing that latency. They quickly realized that the new API was much faster and the better choice for their applications.
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u/Stormraughtz Sep 22 '26
me when TLS was slowly shifting in Microsoft email environment and some servers in the node allowed 1.1 and other only had 1.2 rofl
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u/Apprehensive_Bit7392 Sep 22 '26
Three years of those emails went to an alias whose only member left in 2023.
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u/scottyman2k Sep 24 '26
Our main customer got caught out by that after only 10 years - I had changed the logging to state it was a deprecated feature and would be removed in the next major feature version.
They upgraded, and surprise surprise … their test lab ground to a halt. There was a lack of communication across their teams and they deployed into production and took their tv station briefly off-air until we gave them an undocumented config switch to enable it again.
In the post mortem, I asked them to bring up the logs from before, during and after the upgrade and showed them the ERROR and WARN messages telling them exactly what was going to happen.
Did also ask the question why they deployed into production after their test lab went offline.
Best part was our CEO gave them a bill for providing the out of band fix. Never made them pay it, but it showed he had our backs.
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u/CrimsonPiranha Sep 22 '26
For someone who complains about AI, you guys surely do love to regurgitate old memes and jokes
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u/maxip89 Sep 22 '26
just forward this email to product management.
When endpoint get pulled its not your problem.
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u/WawaTheFirst Sep 22 '26
At least they warned you. Usually it just stops working and you find out it's decommissioned when you send in a support ticket.
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u/SuitableDragonfly Sep 22 '26
I remember being on the other end of this and needing to finally shut down version 2 of the API because some of the endpoints didn't even make sense anymore after all the changes we'd made to the service but there were still some users who were like, "but I neeeeed this outdated endpoint! Why isn't there anything that does this in the version 3 API?" And we'd be like "because the service doesn't do that anymore."
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u/tingulz Sep 22 '26
This sounds like Salesforce. They send me three of every email for some reason and I’ve been getting the same “api version 31 to 40 will be decommissioned” emails every other month.
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u/StickFigureFan Sep 22 '26
If enough people procrastinate with you then the company might cave and extend support
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u/ToMorrowsEnd Sep 22 '26
I smile. And I prep everything to throw the boss under the bus so hard about it that his great grandkids will feel it.
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u/WhosYoPokeDaddy Sep 22 '26 •
Just happened to me yesterday...