Hacker News Reader

The argument FOR 63 bit message sizes was that you could effectively turn the message based protocol into a stream, except, unfortunately, the "stream" has a limit even if it seems plenty big enough now.

Personally I wouldn't have included the 63 bit message size.

View on HN

What's the point? What's the difference between a stream of messages, and a stream of bytes? Nothing.

The difference is that with a stream of websocket messages every so often you need to deal with the framing. With a stream of bytes you don't. This precludes the use case that was the basis of the argument for 63 byte messages if you ever have to 'stream' a 'message' that needs to be longer... Sure you can send it as multiple fragments but then you can't do the 'here's a file handle, read the stream' thing that was proposed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com