Agreed @ not for the faint of heart.
There is at least one alternative "CRDT-free" approach for the less brave among us: https://mattweidner.com/2025/05/21/text-without-crdts.html
There is at least one alternative "CRDT-free" approach for the less brave among us: https://mattweidner.com/2025/05/21/text-without-crdts.html
The author has made a CRDT. He denies that his algorithm constitutes a CRDT. It's a straightforward merge, not a "fancy algorithm".
What specific aspect of a CRDT does this solution not satisfy? The C? The R? The D? The T?
Still, every algorithm that's actually labeled a CRDT shares a magical property: if my replica has some changes, and your replica has some changes, our replicas can share their changes with each other and each converge closer to the final state of the document, even if other people have been editing at the same time, and different subsets of their changes have been shared with you or I. That is, you can apply peoples' changes in any order and still get the same result. I don't think it's useful to call anything without that property a CRDT.
Seems like a terrible trade to me. Just use a crdt. They’re good.