4 ms·

Yes, please! Even more layers of needlessly complex crap will definitely improve things!

• walterbell 2y ago
  > needlessly complex The optional Braid extension can _reduce_ complexity for offline-first apps, e.g. relative to WebDAV, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40482610 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40482610 You might be surprised at just how elegantly HTTP extends into a full-featured synchronization protocol. A key to this elegance is the Merge-Type: this is the abstraction that allows a single synchronization algorithm to merge across multiple data types. As an application programmer, you will specify both the data types of your variables (e.g. int, string, bool) and also the merge-types (e.g. "this merges as a bank account balance, or a LWW unique ID, or a collaborative text field"). This is all the application programmer needs to specify. The rest of the synchronization algorithm gets automated by middleware libraries that the programmer can just use and rely upon, like his compiler, and web browser. I'd encourage you to check out the Braid spec, and notice how much we can do with how little. This is because HTTP already has almost everything we need. Compare this with the WebDAV spec, for instance, which tries to define versioning on top of HTTP, and you'll see how monstrous the result becomes. Example here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40481003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40481003