add FAQs entry about API calls

adrian-datacamp commented 6 years ago

http://authoring.datacamp.com/faq/

Background

It is not uncommon that instructors want to run API calls to download data from somewhere. This is not advisable because

if the API host servers go down, students won't be able to complete their DataCamp exercise
if the API host servers are slow, DataCamp exercise could be really slow
if the API changes after you've built your course, we'd need to rebuild that lesson
if too many DataCamp students are issuing API calls at the same time, our servers could go down

Suggestion

@richierocks suggested including an entry on Authoring FAQs where we can tell instructors that they shouldn't use APIs, and potentially also our workarounds to them.

richierocks commented 5 years ago

This exists here https://instructor-support.datacamp.com/frequently-asked-questions-faq/datasets/using-web-apis

adrian-datacamp commented 5 years ago

@richierocks, thanks for the article! Do you think it should explicitly mention workaround options?

datacamp / authoring

add FAQs entry about API calls #167

Background

Suggestion