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Re: [hybi] Protocol simplicity and the "amateur programmer" standard

Greg Wilkins <gregw@webtide.com> Mon, 26 July 2010 16:52 UTC

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References: <ECF0E97F-1DA2-4662-BA48-F68B65AA8179@apple.com> <4C4D66AF.9030905@opera.com> <DAA95AEE-300E-4C2D-BBCA-02D0385EE482@apple.com> <4C4D760A.9060906@opera.com> <C1B1A36F-55E1-4526-B535-3F9CF27F1EB7@brandedcode.com> <AANLkTikWb1w5PrH2XoB4kVHY+u=BZxwh1Bm3oPwdZhbf@mail.gmail.com> <4C4DA92D.8010105@opera.com> <AANLkTikobVGTxbs3XqLv25WXd9VkZtB4vmxUJGc5uwE1@mail.gmail.com> <4C4DACCC.3050900@opera.com>
Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2010 02:53:13 +1000
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From: Greg Wilkins <gregw@webtide.com>
To: James Graham <jgraham@opera.com>
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Subject: Re: [hybi] Protocol simplicity and the "amateur programmer" standard
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On 27 July 2010 01:42, James Graham <jgraham@opera.com> wrote:

>
> Will people still be willing to make breaking changes in, say, a year, if
> it has come to pass that Mozilla, Google, Apple and Opera are all shipping
> something like the current protocol and a non-trivial amount of content is
> using it?
>

Code running in the browsers should be dependent only on the API and the
behavioural contract that it makes.  I think that there is a large amount of
freedom to change the protocol beneath the websocket API and the application
code will hardly notice (except maybe it will work more reliably).

The servers will have to change, but they should also be protecting their
applications with APIs.  Yet another reason that it would be crazy for
applications to develop their own protocol implementations.

regards

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