5 ms·
Ignoring authentication, POP and IMAP truly are legacy protocols in the sense that they were designed in an era where bandwidth, not latency was the major const
by murderfs 4y ago
Ignoring authentication, POP and IMAP truly are legacy protocols in the sense that they were designed in an era where bandwidth, not latency was the major constraint for accessing email. It made sense to send a notification that the size of your inbox changed, and let the client decide whether or not to fetch your emails. Since then, internet connections have gotten tens of thousands of times more bandwidth, but the speed of light hasn't improved correspondingly.
- qwerty456127 4y agoNow or then, whatever the bandwidth or latency, why couldn't we just use a REST web service which would let a client access whatever the parameter incl. mailbox size, list the messages, read the messages in form of JSON/XML arrays of metadata + message bodies in Markdown format?
- weird-eye-issue 4y agoThere are Google and Microsoft APIs for exactly this. Well not markdown exactly but since emails are not sent in markdown it would be kind of subjective exactly how to properly convert it
- HelloNurse 4y agoBecause without a standard protocol they would be N underspecified proprietary variants: the Gmail web service, the Office 365 web service, the Office 365 from last year web service... All of them with complicated authentication requirements, idiosyncratic URL construction, and other difficulties. You would throw away the baby and keep the bathwater.
- qwerty456127 4y agoI meant a standardized REST protocol. Why does it have (or ever had) to be something obscure like SMTP/POP3/IMAP if it could be just REST (still standardized, name it whatever)?
- weird-eye-issue 4y agoHard enough to get people within the same company to agree on something or use consistent API conventions... Heck you'd probably have a hard time just getting people to agree to use REST. "Why not GraphQL?"
- GoblinSlayer 4y agoIMAP is more efficient than REST.
- qwerty456127 4y agoIs it so much more efficient to be worth the obscurity?
- GoblinSlayer 4y agoIMAP is not obscured, it's quite front and bright if you ask me.