Re:CRDTs are the future
by tootie on Monday September 28, 2020 @08:09PM
(#24622693)
When this guy discusses OT vs CRDT he's discussing algorithms for some very specific use cases. Namely, concurrent document editing a la Google Docs. Realistically, there's maybe 50 people in the world who are versed in these kinds of algorithms at a really deep level. 99% of us are users. If I was pressed into it, I maybe have the chops to implement a reference implementation for something like this, but I've never come with a country mile of an organization that has the resources to invest in something like that. You can be a great programmer with a very successful career as someone who only knows how to read an API and use it. And unless you are tasked with creating a concurrent document editor, you will probably never need to understand the API for a CRDT.
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generally agree, but I bet there is more like 500-5000 people that understand this kind of stuff. Most modern web tools support at least some basic functionality of synchronously working on the same document.
Concurrency is really broad problem space with a million applications, but not real-time editing of an indeterminate data object. Concurrent modification of a row in a database is a perfect example of deeply complex problem that 99% of us don't really need to understand beyond how to use the API. If you know how to commit a transaction, you don't need to read the thousands of dissertations on how to process them optimally.