See, this is why we can't have real conversations about this problem, because most people don't even understand what they are saying and just spout off dogma.

See, this is why we can't have real conversations about this problem, because most people don't even understand what they are saying and just spout off dogma. 1. Just because you haven't "encountered a single environment" doesn't mean you haven't been in one or that you'd even know what to look for to know if you were in one where it would be a net win. 2. "If you're working in distributed systems," you likely have very fat, fast, and reliable pipes between your services. Nagle's algorithm is probably a Bad Thing[tm] in those situations. If you have a lot of Wi-Fi interference or dropped packets, Nagle's algorithm can be the difference between 50bps and 1mbps (assuming your application isn't filling packets), except that Delayed Acks prevents you from realizing all that. There's no "one size fits all" solution, but you have control over Nagle's algorithm, you do not have control over Delayed Acks.