

Say hello to the real real-time Web - mayop100
http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/05/say-hello-to-the-real-real-time-web/?1

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silentbicycle
Real-time means something specific: every operation has a hard limit for upper
bounded time.

I'm working on an embedded system right now; they typically cannot use garbage
collection, because any GC pauses will utterly destroy the project's real-time
guarantees. This board's microprocessor has an external hardware watchdog,
which reboots the whole system unless I reset a timer every 2.5 msec or less.
This is a reasonable limit, because if the program is unresponsive for too
long, _people may die_. (It's automotive hardware.)

I think calling anything running in Javascript and across a network "real-
time" is a bit misleading. What you mean is "soft real-time", which is far
more forgiving.

~~~
mayop100
(Firebase founder here) I used to work for an RTOS company, so I do understand
where you are coming from. Real-time has different meanings in different
contexts though. For an operating system it means hard guarantees on response
times.

Over a public network this is impossible, so it instead means that data is
being pushed to clients as quickly as possible. The "soft real-time" phrasing
might be accurate, but it is a distinction that is probably not helpful, as I
think it would confuse more people than it would help, and people in the RTOS
world know the difference anyways.

~~~
forgotAgain
_... this is impossible, so it instead means ..._

The lack of engineering rigor in that statement taken with the inherent
security issues in re-broadcasting messages from a public client to other
public clients would make me very leery of using your product.

~~~
mrkurt
Is "engineering rigor of statements" always a big part of your criteria for
using products?

~~~
alinajaf
It is when it comes from the founder of a company that sells itself as a
'scalable realtime backend for your web-app'.

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pestaa

        And because the framework is based on Node.js,
        developers don't have to worry about connection
        issues or scale.
    

Err, no. It might be better for open connections, but nothing is worry-free
ever.

Also, I don't buy the selling point "hey this is a new tech so you don't have
to learn any tech!". What is this rush to introduce new stuff to solve the
problem of too many?

And why push it harder by stating not only the big guys can do this? Nobody
should do it only because Twitter or Google do it.

It's not like I wouldn't use real-time solutions, but this article did sound
like "let's find a use for this new thing."

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hising
I think Battlelog (<http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/gate/>), Battlefields
community, running on real time framework Planet
(<http://www.planetframework.com/>) is a good example on how real time web
apps should be built. Client side rendering, live updating surfaces via
"WebSockets". Nice to see this getting more coverage, I think it is a
knowledge web developers must learn to master, or at least learn best
practices for real time patterns. Interesting times indeed.

~~~
Sargis
Here's Armin Ronacher talking about the structure of Battlelog.
[http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2011/11/15/modern-web-
applications-a...](http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2011/11/15/modern-web-applications-
are-here/)

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northisup
This article is so full of platitudes and buzzwords it is embarrassing.

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comex
Meteor and Firebase and other novel web app frameworks are one thing... MMO
Asteroids, or any multiplayer game, is another. Game developers have been
doing multiplayer for a very long time; the frameworks promise to blur the
line between client and server, but MMO Asteroids is still trivial with
traditional client-server code, without any funky security model, making it a
bit of an odd showcase.

Anyway, I doubt those frameworks have lag compensation
([https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Source_Multiplayer_...](https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Source_Multiplayer_Networking#Lag_compensation)),
so good luck avoiding jitter :)

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digamber_kamat
Please use the word "real-time" as it is used in CS literature. Or use soft
real time when you just mean fast.

~~~
bergie
I kind of like the term _live web_ for what the article describes

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chj
am i the only one fooled? say hello to websockets might be a better title.

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downvoteme
I'd like to see a real-time OS that was an easy to set up and had the hardware
and software support of Linux/BSD. Sometimes I want to be able to estimate how
long a job is going to take.

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MarkPNeyer
there's nothing "leading edge" about much in web development. the algorithmic
trading crowd has been doing this for years.

