6.1.1. RQ1
“What are some of the pains from client developers when evolving their clients to make use of the newest version of a web API?”. Through our interviews, client developers highlighted how the early versions of web APIs are invariably unstable and change-prone. While some web API providers offer indicators of particularly unstable functionality in their web API, by default web API providers push breaking changes across the whole feature set. It also became clear that no standard policy exists on what concerns deprecation periods and that the ideal amount of time is dependent on
the developer. Ideally longer periods would be provided but further study is required to establish what the cost would be for the web API provider to keep two versions of a web API active for a longer period of time. The technology being used also plays a role
in the developers satisfaction with an observed preference for REST and JSON amongst the interviewed developers