What is this real-time web you speak of? | Hacker News Reader

What is this real-time web you speak of?

venturebeat.com

13 pointsSidneyAllen8 comments

That's not real time, real time is measured in nanoseconds, this is just a bidirectional socket. No one really cares about the *asS crap, TCP sockets aren't some kind of mystical technology.

If you've worked with a protocol other than HTTP this isn't really a 'miracle'.

Just add ZeroMQ to your app, a few triggers to your DB, you're pretty much done. Or apt-get install ejabberd and add something like XMPPFramework to your app, again, this stuff is a day or two of dev work.

How exactly do proprietary APIs, protocols, and formats democratize something as simple as adding a few more files to your project?

Realtime is measured in whatever you need to measure it in. Realtime means that the system will guarantee to perform its function within some timeframe. If it violates this (even by a nanosecond), it's failed. Think of the airbags in you car. If they function perfectly 2 seconds too late you simply don't care.

There are plenty of realtime (often termed hard realtime) systems where that action can take minutes or hours, but if it isn't performed by then lives can be lost.

The "realtime" people usually talk about is soft realtime. Trying to perform tasks as fast as possible (or within some average response time), but if the odd task takes longer that's OK.

Anything involving a dynamic open network would be soft realtime.

Agree. In terms of web and user experience, realtime often just means way faster then before. If you had to wait a year before your computation is done, a day is essentially realtime.

Perhaps a better synonym for the recent usage of the term "realtime" would be "interactive" or "continuous update".

With hard realtime, you can also fail my performing to early. Continuing with the airbags example, if they deploy 2 seconds before the collision it is still a failure.

Just another buzzword spin on the "Internet of Things" BS or the privatization of public resources, including ideas, communication, etc., because economists say we'll all die and society will collapse unless control is maintained by the elite.

>Two key benefits are increased user engagement and reduced server load.

The two key benefits are pushing complexity/responsiblity/risk out to the edge and away from core financials and increased control of customers. Also, being able to retroactively change digital records then claim that they are immutable and that there's "nothing we can do" saves a lot of support costs and generally stops financial fraud investigation in its tracks.

Of course existing technology can appear "real time" just as well as any security-inauditable JavaScript library and proprietary API locked up in some random virtualized black-box, but only that kind of technology allows "remote administration" of live 3rd party software.

You know what would really convince me that building on top of proprietary hardware/software with land-baron type rights and EULA isn't just farming a dustbowl for whatever residual value was left after big data got through with it, is another "open source" javascript library that makes integrating with the cloud easier.

Real-time is definitely the future of development, but disappointed to see no mention of real-time client side technologies like the one I'm working on (http://playir.com). That allows you to update client-side source code across mobile web & native platforms.

I'm disappointed not to see SignalR listed as an option. I've used it and have no complaints.

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