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Telegram has like 30 people and is more feature rich, faster in development, smoother in operation and the stuff they provide is more mind-blowing than whatever

Telegram has like 30 people and is more feature rich, faster in development, smoother in operation and the stuff they provide is more mind-blowing than whatever Meta's team has ever come up with.

sgt 4y ago
What is Telegram's real time chat feature built in. Also Erlang?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- pingiun 4y ago
  I believe it's C++
  - sgt 4y ago
    According to HN that is madness. You simply cannot write services in C++! /s
bsaul 4y ago
telegram isn't e2e (at least by default) and it doesn't support all the java phones whatsapp does ( not sure if whatsapp still do though). But most of all, it was created much much later, after all the patterns and techniques have already being ironed out by the first wave of chat systems.
- gorbypark 4y ago
  I might be wrong, but I believe e2e in WhatsApp came after the Meta acquisition. There was some sort of encryption as far back as 2012, but I don't think it was end-to-end. Only iOS and Android had support for it, but not any of the other clients. The partnership with Whisper Systems and "true" e2e came in 2016 (~2 years after the acquisition).
- NayamAmarshe 4y ago
  > telegram isn't e2e (at least by default) I don't see how that has an edge over the cloud sync functionality though. Cloud sync, having thousands and millions of people in a group, group topics, 4GB file sending limit are more impressive than some closed source implementation of E2EE we can never even verify. > all the java phones whatsapp does ( not sure if whatsapp still do though). It doesn't anymore. Telegram works even without an app, through their website (On phones too, yes) so I'd say it's more accessible and having open source clients and APIs means that you can create a Telegram client for literally any platform.
  - bsaul 4y ago
    From a tech perspective, e2e adds a lot of constraints on reliability and message ordering which makes it hard to distribute (think « exactly once » vs « at least once » kind of problem, albeit a little different). It also adds a lot of UX problems, since every device has its own secrets and version of the messages. This is, imho what makes whatsapp uniquely hard to scale.
    - NayamAmarshe 4y ago
      Yep, spot on. E2EE has technical limitations, that's why even Telegram's own E2EE is pretty limited in functionality.

Telegram has like 30 people and is more feature rich, faster in development, smoother in operation and the stuff they provide is more mind-blowing than whatever Meta's team has ever come up with.

sgt 4y ago

What is Telegram's real time chat feature built in. Also Erlang?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pingiun 4y ago
I believe it's C++
- sgt 4y ago
  According to HN that is madness. You simply cannot write services in C++! /s

bsaul 4y ago

telegram isn't e2e (at least by default) and it doesn't support all the java phones whatsapp does ( not sure if whatsapp still do though). But most of all, it was created much much later, after all the patterns and techniques have already being ironed out by the first wave of chat systems.

gorbypark 4y ago
I might be wrong, but I believe e2e in WhatsApp came after the Meta acquisition. There was some sort of encryption as far back as 2012, but I don't think it was end-to-end. Only iOS and Android had support for it, but not any of the other clients. The partnership with Whisper Systems and "true" e2e came in 2016 (~2 years after the acquisition).
NayamAmarshe 4y ago
> telegram isn't e2e (at least by default) I don't see how that has an edge over the cloud sync functionality though. Cloud sync, having thousands and millions of people in a group, group topics, 4GB file sending limit are more impressive than some closed source implementation of E2EE we can never even verify. > all the java phones whatsapp does ( not sure if whatsapp still do though). It doesn't anymore. Telegram works even without an app, through their website (On phones too, yes) so I'd say it's more accessible and having open source clients and APIs means that you can create a Telegram client for literally any platform.
- bsaul 4y ago
  From a tech perspective, e2e adds a lot of constraints on reliability and message ordering which makes it hard to distribute (think « exactly once » vs « at least once » kind of problem, albeit a little different). It also adds a lot of UX problems, since every device has its own secrets and version of the messages. This is, imho what makes whatsapp uniquely hard to scale.
  - NayamAmarshe 4y ago
    Yep, spot on. E2EE has technical limitations, that's why even Telegram's own E2EE is pretty limited in functionality.