2 ms·

You really want to use CRDTs, not data types subject to human resolved merge conflicts.

• rektide 4y ago
  I feel like crdts are sold as a panacea. I can esily imagine users making conflicting changes, so I dont really see or understand what the real value or weaknesses of CRDTs are. Im also used to seeing them used for online synchronization, & far less examples of distributed crdts, which is, to me, highly important. Git by contrast has straightforward & good merge strategies. At this point, I feel like the problems are complex & that we need complex tools that leave users & devs in charge & steering. Im so ready to be wrong, but I dont feel like these problems are outsmartable; crdts have always felt like they try to define a too limited world. For now, I feel like tools for managing files between different fs'es are more complex, but a minimum level of possibility we need.
  • jka 4y ago
    Whether conflict-resolution can be performed automatically or may require manual input is important at scale. Human editors may cause the content within a CRDT datastructure to become inconsistent in the sense of "is this document understandable by another person", but they can't cause conflicts that block the editing process on-disk. On the other hand, git merges can -- and frequently do -- involve conflict resolution that isn't effectively handled -- especially in a distributed system -- by automated measures.