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Personally, I consider it very bad taste for you to sanctimoniously criticize Gaffer's tone to promote your own work. Sometimes a good rant is a very effective

by Goladus 11y ago

Personally, I consider it very bad taste for you to sanctimoniously criticize Gaffer's tone to promote your own work. Sometimes a good rant is a very effective way to communicate. PS http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

paulhauggis 11y ago
Funny. If you are loved on hn, you can treat other people like shit (and berate them). Pg is not a god and it makes the community look hypocritical and stupid.
andy_ppp 11y ago
Hmmmm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_pot_calling_the_kettle_black https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_pot_calling_the_kettle_bla...
- Goladus 11y ago
  At least make sure your accusation is true before making it.
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ggambetta 11y ago
You are probably right -- it was bad taste. I got a bit annoyed by the tone of the article; I don't think personal insults have a place in a technical discussion. I taught Computer Graphics for several years, and I came across two kinds of students: uninterested, so no matter what you do they probably won't learn; and interested and trying hard but not understanding, in which case it's my responsibility as the teacher to find a way to get the idea into their heads. In this latter case I believe asking someone who is trying (but failing) to understand what I'm saying "What the fuck is wrong with you?" doesn't lead to better understanding on their part. Yes, I promote my own work, but this is because I feel it caters to a public that is usually left out -- the absolute beginner. The kind of people who are missing a mental leap or two to get the concepts but are either ignored or essentially called idiots for not understanding.
- camperman 11y ago
  Gaffer is absolutely not saying 'What the fuck is wrong with you?' to beginners. He's saying it to the so-called experts who posted nonsense like this: "Yeah... Gaffer is well-known as a guide, but also kind of horribly flawed. Question 1 for networking development: Do you need everything that TCP offers? If yes, then use TCP. You're not going to outperform TCP to do what it's good at. If not, read on." This was a gilded +20 comment in the thread despite a) being nonsense and b) having the temerity to call his advice 'horribly flawed.' He is an expert with multiple shipped AAA games. And he prefixed his rant with RANT MODE ON. Sometimes you just need the cluestick.
  - pyre 11y ago
    > You're not going to outperform TCP to do what it's good at. I took this to be something more akin to "never implement your own crypto." If everyone followed that advice there would be no crypto, so it's obviously not blanket advice.
    - aavegmittal 11y ago
      Agreed. TCP is a great general purpose communication protocol, but using it in all situations is probably not a good idea. For eg, for a specific case of mobile networks, a custom protocol built over UDP could out perform TCP. details here: https://packetzoom.com/blog/lessons-learned-tcp-slow-start-doesnt-have-to-be-so-slow.html https://packetzoom.com/blog/lessons-learned-tcp-slow-start-d...
    - Dylan16807 11y ago
      Even looking at it like that, it's wrong. TCP has a lot of tunable parameters where the choices are baked into it, and it assumes that extra round trips are no big deal. Crypto does not have all that many tradeoffs. You just need expert implementation. It's dangerous and unnecessary to do it yourself. For something that is low-bandwidth and latency-sensitive, you can take TCP and make minor adjustments and come out with something that is far better suited. Even something as dumb and easy as sending all packets twice could turn an semi-common jitter into an ultra-rare jitter. If you could open a TCP socket with forward error correction options, and disable head-of-line blocking, then you could probably argue against custom TCP-like protocols. But that's not the world we live in.
duaneb 11y ago
This is not one of them. Frankly, unless you have a reason NOT to use TCP (and a very good one is realtime lossy communication), don't try to implement your own damn custom protocol on top of UDP that's just going to be a shittier TCP. This doesn't mean that TCP is perfect, but if you want lossless communication you will PROBABLY be happier there. If I'm writing a chess game, I could easily just stream the text format of the games over an IRC channel. Many things, including games, don't necessarily need high bandwidth or low latency over consistency. But the attitude is definitely not warranted.

by Goladus 11y ago

paulhauggis 11y ago

Funny. If you are loved on hn, you can treat other people like shit (and berate them). Pg is not a god and it makes the community look hypocritical and stupid.

andy_ppp 11y ago

Hmmmm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_pot_calling_the_kettle_black https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_pot_calling_the_kettle_bla...

Goladus 11y ago
At least make sure your accusation is true before making it.
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  [deleted]

ggambetta 11y ago

You are probably right -- it was bad taste. I got a bit annoyed by the tone of the article; I don't think personal insults have a place in a technical discussion. I taught Computer Graphics for several years, and I came across two kinds of students: uninterested, so no matter what you do they probably won't learn; and interested and trying hard but not understanding, in which case it's my responsibility as the teacher to find a way to get the idea into their heads. In this latter case I believe asking someone who is trying (but failing) to understand what I'm saying "What the fuck is wrong with you?" doesn't lead to better understanding on their part. Yes, I promote my own work, but this is because I feel it caters to a public that is usually left out -- the absolute beginner. The kind of people who are missing a mental leap or two to get the concepts but are either ignored or essentially called idiots for not understanding.

camperman 11y ago
Gaffer is absolutely not saying 'What the fuck is wrong with you?' to beginners. He's saying it to the so-called experts who posted nonsense like this: "Yeah... Gaffer is well-known as a guide, but also kind of horribly flawed. Question 1 for networking development: Do you need everything that TCP offers? If yes, then use TCP. You're not going to outperform TCP to do what it's good at. If not, read on." This was a gilded +20 comment in the thread despite a) being nonsense and b) having the temerity to call his advice 'horribly flawed.' He is an expert with multiple shipped AAA games. And he prefixed his rant with RANT MODE ON. Sometimes you just need the cluestick.
- pyre 11y ago
  > You're not going to outperform TCP to do what it's good at. I took this to be something more akin to "never implement your own crypto." If everyone followed that advice there would be no crypto, so it's obviously not blanket advice.
  - aavegmittal 11y ago
    Agreed. TCP is a great general purpose communication protocol, but using it in all situations is probably not a good idea. For eg, for a specific case of mobile networks, a custom protocol built over UDP could out perform TCP. details here: https://packetzoom.com/blog/lessons-learned-tcp-slow-start-doesnt-have-to-be-so-slow.html https://packetzoom.com/blog/lessons-learned-tcp-slow-start-d...
  - Dylan16807 11y ago
    Even looking at it like that, it's wrong. TCP has a lot of tunable parameters where the choices are baked into it, and it assumes that extra round trips are no big deal. Crypto does not have all that many tradeoffs. You just need expert implementation. It's dangerous and unnecessary to do it yourself. For something that is low-bandwidth and latency-sensitive, you can take TCP and make minor adjustments and come out with something that is far better suited. Even something as dumb and easy as sending all packets twice could turn an semi-common jitter into an ultra-rare jitter. If you could open a TCP socket with forward error correction options, and disable head-of-line blocking, then you could probably argue against custom TCP-like protocols. But that's not the world we live in.

duaneb 11y ago

This is not one of them. Frankly, unless you have a reason NOT to use TCP (and a very good one is realtime lossy communication), don't try to implement your own damn custom protocol on top of UDP that's just going to be a shittier TCP. This doesn't mean that TCP is perfect, but if you want lossless communication you will PROBABLY be happier there. If I'm writing a chess game, I could easily just stream the text format of the games over an IRC channel. Many things, including games, don't necessarily need high bandwidth or low latency over consistency. But the attitude is definitely not warranted.