5 ms·

Indeed, RSC reminds me of CORBA [1]. CORBA is a way to mix local components with remote components. CORBA is very mature and works in many languages. So why doe

Indeed, RSC reminds me of CORBA [1]. CORBA is a way to mix local components with remote components. CORBA is very mature and works in many languages. So why doesn't everyone use it? I would guess that most developers today have never even heard of it. Why is that? I would suggest that anyone who wants to invent another distributed component architecture should study CORBA and its descendants and why they have never really caught on. (Hint: hidden component boundaries mean hidden complexity!) Meanwhile, the "server-rendered HTML" and "client-rendered HTML" camps are both doing quite well. I consider myself quite lucky to have both options at my disposal for every web project. I hope the work on RSC doesn't muddy React's support for pure client-rendered apps. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Object_Request_Broker_Architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Object_Request_Broker_A...

Steltek 3y ago
CORBA is one of the few technologies purposefully designed to violate both the entirety of the Fallacies of Distributed Computing and the CAP theorem. It's a case study in awful ideas, week long troubleshooting nightmares, and angry customers. You don't hear about it for the same reason it's impolite to talk about your top 10 favorite snuff films with customers. There is no situation where it's appropriate and anyone flirting with the notion needs to be dismissed before they doom your company. CORBA is pure evil and you should not speak its name so lightly.
- sonofhans 3y ago
  Preach it.
marcosdumay 3y ago
> So why doesn't everyone use it? Not to detract from your point, but nobody uses it because when network administrators everywhere started closing all the ports except for 80 (for "security!"), everybody moved to SOAP, that uses the port 80. And then, since the SOAP consortium doesn't have enough competency to create a full data transfer format, starting from XML and contained in a couple thousands pages of docs, in about a decade people said "enough!" and moved into what is commonly called REST. The problem with component boundaries is there, but it's not really what CORBA did.
mannyv 3y ago
CORBA was a total piece of shit back in the day. Nobody in their right mind would chose it for anything today except as example of "don't do this when you're designing and implementing something." It's an over engineered overly complicated design that leaves a lot of crucial stuff undefined, which made interoperability impossible. From a performance perspective it was crap. And debugging an implementation was almost impossible. It's a great example of how architects can destroy a good idea by layering ridiculous amounts of abstraction into an incomprehensible pile of software. And it shows that architecture without implementation experience should never happen.

Steltek 3y ago

CORBA is one of the few technologies purposefully designed to violate both the entirety of the Fallacies of Distributed Computing and the CAP theorem. It's a case study in awful ideas, week long troubleshooting nightmares, and angry customers. You don't hear about it for the same reason it's impolite to talk about your top 10 favorite snuff films with customers. There is no situation where it's appropriate and anyone flirting with the notion needs to be dismissed before they doom your company. CORBA is pure evil and you should not speak its name so lightly.

sonofhans 3y ago
Preach it.

marcosdumay 3y ago

> So why doesn't everyone use it? Not to detract from your point, but nobody uses it because when network administrators everywhere started closing all the ports except for 80 (for "security!"), everybody moved to SOAP, that uses the port 80. And then, since the SOAP consortium doesn't have enough competency to create a full data transfer format, starting from XML and contained in a couple thousands pages of docs, in about a decade people said "enough!" and moved into what is commonly called REST. The problem with component boundaries is there, but it's not really what CORBA did.

mannyv 3y ago

CORBA was a total piece of shit back in the day. Nobody in their right mind would chose it for anything today except as example of "don't do this when you're designing and implementing something." It's an over engineered overly complicated design that leaves a lot of crucial stuff undefined, which made interoperability impossible. From a performance perspective it was crap. And debugging an implementation was almost impossible. It's a great example of how architects can destroy a good idea by layering ridiculous amounts of abstraction into an incomprehensible pile of software. And it shows that architecture without implementation experience should never happen.