Why You Should Stop Asking "Is This a Breaking Change?"

Stop me if you've heard "is this a breaking change?" in a meeting.

Odds are that you have.

...or probably have been the person in a meeting who has asked (or quietly wondered) this question.

As a Developer Advocate at ecobee, if I had a dollar for every time someone asked me that question, I'd be a happy camper.

Ok, but before we answer that question, let's talk about the question itself.

"Is this a breaking change?" is the question to ask.

You don't really want to know whether an API change will break any of your existing API consumer's integrations.

You don't.

The question you want to ask is "does this proposed change have the potential to adversely impact an existing integration with our API?"

The question isn't "will it?"

The question is "could it?"

...

If it "could" then "yes, it is a breaking change."

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.