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I don't understand something: "Cloudflare workers" are, at the end of the day, computers, right? Probably virtual ones (either VMs or containers). So, why is the ability of creating TCP sockets a feature? Why their "cloudflare workers" had that handicap to begin with?

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They are neither VMs or containers, but V8 Isolates. They lacked an API for making outgoing raw TCP connections in the same way that JavaScript running in a browser can’t.

This used to be an option in Chrome when running in an extension. Sadly sockets were removed in manifest v3.

I was lost about the distinction. This talk really helped: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/cloudflare-v8/

I might be wrong, but they're more like a browser’s "service worker" than a Node app.[0] The fact that they have to manually add "compatibility" with Node modules like `utils`[1] seems to support this.

[0]: https://blog.cloudflare.com/node-js-support-cloudflare-worke...

[1]: https://blog.cloudflare.com/workers-node-js-asynclocalstorag...

That's exactly right, and they even use the same API[1] for accepting and replying to HTTP requests . As well as supporting other service worker APIs like caches.

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/FetchEvent

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