[dobbles]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

I read something (actually it might have been posted in this thread, as I think about it) from developer who posted a conversation they had with reddit, where reddit mentioned the guy's app was inefficient with their api calls. The dev's response... actually, instead of trying to remember, I'll just post it:



So the guy's app uses (on average) 345 requests per day per user, compared to other apps that only use 100 per day per user... and the his response was essentially "who cares, we're allowed to use up to 86,400."

I mean, that mentality isn't exactly help anyone. If I was in Reddit's shoes, I would set realistically acceptable efficiency targets and then give the dev community 3 (6, maybe?) months to get their calls within those targets. After that, I would install fair/competitive rates for apps that complied (maybe even reward the most efficient apps with lower charges). Then I would subject any apps that don't come come under those targets to ridiculously higher rates on all their calls (not just the overage) until they complied or shut down.

Edit: Also, the dev I quoted above used this analogy:



But what they need to think about is that api calls are fairly predictable (on a per call basis, using reasonably similar parameters). Like, everyone is making the same calls. So, using his analogy, it would be like the car he's talking about can only go to the same store from the same house, no matter who drives it. So are the two people using this car the same number of times each? If so, his 3.4 miles is not nearly as efficient as the other person's 1 mile.

The one thing missing from this guy's post is a way to differentiate the two useage totals. Since they're only providing per day numbers, it's hard to really understand the full picture without #of unique visits or even calls per view or... I don't know... anything tangible, really.

This seems like a really odd takeaway from all of this. The very next paragraph that you conveniently left out states:

That being said, if Reddit would like to see Apollo make further optimizations to get its existing number lower, I’m genuinely more than happy to do so! However the 30 day limit they’ve given me after announcing the pricing to when I will start getting charged significant amounts of money is not enough time to deal with rewriting large parts of my app to lower total requests, while also changing the payment model, transitioning users, and ensuring this is all properly tested and gets through app review.

So he acknowledges he can make improvements, but notes that he was not given much time to do so. And this is why I think his analogies are actually valid. He had an app that was using only a fraction of what was defined as an acceptable amount of resources. So while more efficient is always better, why would he expect that his app would be a 'problem'? He also talked about how he had been given assurances that the pricing model would be more amenable. So again, it seems pretty unreasonable to think that the problem here is his apps efficiency.