Hacker News Reader

Comment by telent | Hacker News Reader

How can you say (TCP|Unix|C) is going to give you a bunch of stuff "for free" when you haven't even seen the application. How do you know you're even going to get what you want?

You don't, of course, but it's usually a pretty reasonable assumption that the effort involved in implementing your own (reliable stream sockets|scheduler and memory manager|high level language compiler) will eclipse severalfold any advantage from doing so. If you don't find that the same obtains from using HTTP and hypermedia then that's your position and you're welcome to it, but don't go assuming your experience is universal.

View on HN

>You don't, of course, but it's usually a pretty reasonable assumption that the effort involved in implementing your own (reliable stream sockets|scheduler and memory manager|high level language compiler) will eclipse severalfold any advantage from doing so.

Wrong. I implement network protocols for a living, and I use often use UDP because TCP is not sufficient for the purpose. So yeah, this is the problem: your conceit that your upfront design is going to be "enough" for everything.

See where I said "usually"? And where I said your experience is valid but don't assume it's universal? Right

I never said my experience was universal, nor did I imply it. So what's your point?

If "I've never heard a good argument", "a completely academic waste of time" and "why should anyone non-academic building actual systems care what it means" aren't implications that your experience is valid and others' experiences aren't, then I concede and am happy to admit that you have totally Won The Argument if it makes you feel better

In either case, I'm done here.

The fact that you think it us "usually" a valid assumption is exactly the conceit I am talking about. It's only "usually" assumed to be true because the people who have different requirements don't come to the web because it's such a limp platform.

And btw, the point I am making is not against high level constructs. Once you have sockets you can build whatever you like. The problem is HTTP is the bottom level of the web. If you had proper facilities at the bottom you could have your HTTP as a library and I can have my real-time protocols. The web constrains engineers based on some academic's rationalistic ideas about optimisation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com