Exponential backoff: time.sleep with random.randint(0, 1000) / 1000

Question

In many google api\'s code samples i have seen this line of code.

time.sleep((2 ** n) + (random.randint(0, 1000) / 1000))

random.rand

Answer 1

Having a bit of randomness in situations like this is good. For example, if you have a large number of clients hitting the same server, having them use the same deterministic backoff could result in them hitting the server in perfect lockstep, which isn't desirable.