Chapter 16
Preparing for the Worst: What Every Facebook Application Developer Should Know
In This Chapter
- Preparing for (and dealing with) API changes
- Working with rate limits
- Understanding Facebook's rules and terms of service
- Maximizing site performance
Facebook application development is a whirlwind journey of ups and downs, API changes, and platform terms updates. If you haven't experienced this yet, it will hit you eventually. If your software development relies heavily on other systems' APIs, you are always subject to their whim: When Facebook goes down, you are affected; when Twitter slows down, you are affected; when a Terms of Service agreement changes, you are affected.
It's important to prepare for this journey and to know what you're getting into. Facebook development certainly has a lot of value, but it is not without its trials as well!
Hopefully, by sharing with you some of the travails I've been you won't repeat my mistakes. In this chapter, I discuss the things you should be prepared for as you start this journey. I think you'll find that these tips not only help prepare you to work with Facebook, but also to work with any social network — these same problems arise on every social network I have worked on.
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