3 ms·

Totally agree with this article, and this is about collaborative text editing, which is something these solutions and algorithms are actually good at. Looking a

Totally agree with this article, and this is about collaborative text editing, which is something these solutions and algorithms are actually good at. Looking at everything from crdt fanboys applying this to application data and ignoring the UI/UX aspects about conflict resolution makes my neck hair stand up. This is how we end up with linear giving talks about their "sync engine" and happily deleting other users changes with last write wins.

joakims 2y ago
I don't think they're ignoring it, they've just been focusing on solving the algorithmic problems before diving into UX problems. Loro, for instance, has recently shifted their focus towards conflict merging following their 1.0 release. It's simply a question of building a solid foundation before making it user friendly. Yours sincerely, CRDT fanboy
- jFriedensreich 2y ago
  (Automatic) Conflict merging as crdts usually see it is not the same as a full meaning preserving conflict resolution. There is no way an algorithm can always solve a merge conflict without user input or at least custom application level resolution logic. You cannot add this as an afterthought to some automatic crdt. If you search loros docs there is no result for an api to tell it how to resolve a conflict and this is true for most of these systems. Automerge has something but its not fully exposed and quite usable afaik. Again this is fine for real time text collaboration but not for usage for application data. The simple litmustest to understand what i mean is this: You rename a todo changing its meaning and concurrently mark it as done. Can you tell the sync engine to always disregard the marking as done in case of changing the text. If there is no api for this to fully control the merge semantics, your system is not suitable for application data.

3 ms·

Totally agree with this article, and this is about collaborative text editing, which is something these solutions and algorithms are actually good at. Looking a

by jFriedensreich 2y ago

joakims 2y ago
I don't think they're ignoring it, they've just been focusing on solving the algorithmic problems before diving into UX problems. Loro, for instance, has recently shifted their focus towards conflict merging following their 1.0 release. It's simply a question of building a solid foundation before making it user friendly. Yours sincerely, CRDT fanboy
- jFriedensreich 2y ago
  (Automatic) Conflict merging as crdts usually see it is not the same as a full meaning preserving conflict resolution. There is no way an algorithm can always solve a merge conflict without user input or at least custom application level resolution logic. You cannot add this as an afterthought to some automatic crdt. If you search loros docs there is no result for an api to tell it how to resolve a conflict and this is true for most of these systems. Automerge has something but its not fully exposed and quite usable afaik. Again this is fine for real time text collaboration but not for usage for application data. The simple litmustest to understand what i mean is this: You rename a todo changing its meaning and concurrently mark it as done. Can you tell the sync engine to always disregard the marking as done in case of changing the text. If there is no api for this to fully control the merge semantics, your system is not suitable for application data.