DEV Community

Jun Liang
Jun Liang

Posted on

1

The Ongoing Struggle of Maintaining Sample Apps for APIs and SDKs

Sample applications are an essential part of the API and SDK ecosystem, but maintaining them can be one of the most grueling challenges developers face. 🛠️

APIs and SDKs evolve rapidly, often introducing new updates or deprecating features at a pace that’s hard to keep up with. This constant change means sample apps can quickly become outdated, requiring developers to revisit and update their code regularly. 🔄 The effort involved is relentless and time-consuming, pulling developers away from other pressing tasks. ⏳

Even with the best intentions, it’s no surprise that many sample guides come with apps that no longer work. ❌ Broken examples and outdated functionality lead to poor developer experiences—defeating the very purpose of these sample apps. 😕

For small teams or solo developers, this ongoing maintenance can feel particularly overwhelming. 🧑‍💻👩‍💻 How can we lighten this load and create sustainable solutions that don’t burn out developers? 💡

What has your experience been with maintaining sample apps? Have you discovered any tools or workflows that have made this process easier? Let’s share ideas and insights! 💬

API Trace View

Struggling with slow API calls?

Dan Mindru walks through how he used Sentry's new Trace View feature to shave off 22.3 seconds from an API call.

Get a practical walkthrough of how to identify bottlenecks, split tasks into multiple parallel tasks, identify slow AI model calls, and more.

Read more →

Top comments (0)

Sentry image

See why 4M developers consider Sentry, “not bad.”

Fixing code doesn’t have to be the worst part of your day. Learn how Sentry can help.

Learn more

👋 Kindness is contagious

Please leave a ❤️ or a friendly comment on this post if you found it helpful!

Okay