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Comment by javert | Hacker News Reader

Can't people find an alternative to the word "real-time" that hasn't already been used for 30 years to mean something entirely different? (As in, real-time systems, real-time operating systems, etc.)

I'm not trying to put down Firebase, I imagine it's great.

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Sorry - I think "real-time web" is already in our lexicon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_web#Real-time_search

Just make sure people say web after they say real-time and there should be no confusion.

I don't think that it's a lost cause. Mainly because calling these things "real-time" is technically incorrect. Real-time computing is already formally defined and well established.

Given the definition of real-time, one could actually create a real-time web or a real-time search. So there is still cause for confusion--or, at least, technical incorrectness--if one uses that terminology.

Suggestions?

Low-latency seems kinda descriptive if I have understood the 'real-time web' concept correctly.

I'd like to see a term that emphasizes that what web developers consider real time is "so fast it looks instant to humans," rather than guaranteed low latency that another system can rely on (or whatever you consider the true definition of "real time" to be).

So maybe something like "blink speed." (Then we'd have blink speed apps on retina displays.)

I've heard "auto-synchronizing" suggested, but I think that's probably too wordy to catch on. How about "immediate"?

Is this your stock response for any article that mentions real-time? You made an identical comment yesterday about Meteor; only the name differs: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3825728

No, I've never brought it up besides yesterday and today (as far as I recall), and I'm not planning to keep bringing it up and making it a crusade. I try to be a good community member.

Interstingly, I got much more feedback this time, probably due to catching the article soon after it was posted. It's also intersting that you noticed that I'd posted an identical comment yesterday and called me out on it; I was wondering if anyone would.

I hadn't given it much thought, but if making the same comment twice bothers anybody, I apologize.

Meteor dev here. I share your frustration. It's tough to find words to explain these systems that most people will understand. We managed to keep "realtime" off of the meteor.com page :) but we let it slip into the HN story title. That's because some smart people told us that readers scan HN headlines for keywords, and that "realtime" was the word that they were mostly likely to pick up on. I hope that soon we have an appropriate set of words for these new systems.

Interestingly, most of the core Meteor team has worked on systems that you might consider "actually" realtime: I wrote machine vision software that watches a few dozen cameras and tracks objects moving between them, Nick wrote software defined radio code that runs inside rural cell towers, Matt wrote kernel drivers for high performance IO interconnects.

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