Comments on: Juggernaut is a Bad Idea http://orbited.org/blog/2007/08/juggernaut-is-a-bad-idea/ Blogging Comet Applications Sat, 22 Nov 2008 07:22:25 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc By: Mihai Bazon http://orbited.org/blog/2007/08/juggernaut-is-a-bad-idea/#comment-657 Mihai Bazon Thu, 10 Apr 2008 04:07:19 +0000 http://www.orbited.org/blog/2007/08/juggernaut-is-a-bad-idea/#comment-657 <p>Dude, IMO most of your points are wrong... JavaScript implementations <em>should</em> provide such an utterly simple functionality as Flash's XMLSocket—but it <em>doesn't</em>. We're in 2008 and JavaScript is the one single platform that won't allow me to write a program that opens an arbitrary TCP connection. Any <em>other</em> development platform does.</p> <p>I'm telling you, as an experienced hacker and JavaScript programmer: Comet is a hack. HTTP sucks, it's designed for 15 years old technology and it's simply not suitable for an interactive application. With a plain socket it's a lot easier to code.</p> <p>Firewalls are no problem — you can put it on port 80, all you need is to have 2 IP-s (not such a hard requirement after all).</p> <p>I hate Flash from the bottom of my heart, but in many cases it provides the best way to implement browser-server communication. The W3C folks are up in the skies writing insanely complex specs, such as XSLT (who the heck wants to use that crap?) or SVG, but they seem to miss the simple and most important things... we need a platform to work on! Flash, proprietary (and full of bugs) as it is, provides better functionality. I have no doubt, sockets will finally make their way into standards, but it could take years—and tic, tac, tic, tac, I have to make a living, etc. Can't wait for the bureaucrats to get their shit together.</p> <p>Finally, if you want check my online chess game (http://chess.dynarch.com/en.html) — it's JS-based, but it uses Flash to communicate with the server. I wouldn't trade Flash for Comet in this game.</p> Dude, IMO most of your points are wrong… JavaScript implementations should provide such an utterly simple functionality as Flash’s XMLSocket—but it doesn’t. We’re in 2008 and JavaScript is the one single platform that won’t allow me to write a program that opens an arbitrary TCP connection. Any other development platform does.

I’m telling you, as an experienced hacker and JavaScript programmer: Comet is a hack. HTTP sucks, it’s designed for 15 years old technology and it’s simply not suitable for an interactive application. With a plain socket it’s a lot easier to code.

Firewalls are no problem — you can put it on port 80, all you need is to have 2 IP-s (not such a hard requirement after all).

I hate Flash from the bottom of my heart, but in many cases it provides the best way to implement browser-server communication. The W3C folks are up in the skies writing insanely complex specs, such as XSLT (who the heck wants to use that crap?) or SVG, but they seem to miss the simple and most important things… we need a platform to work on! Flash, proprietary (and full of bugs) as it is, provides better functionality. I have no doubt, sockets will finally make their way into standards, but it could take years—and tic, tac, tic, tac, I have to make a living, etc. Can’t wait for the bureaucrats to get their shit together.

Finally, if you want check my online chess game (http://chess.dynarch.com/en.html) — it’s JS-based, but it uses Flash to communicate with the server. I wouldn’t trade Flash for Comet in this game.

]]> By: Michael Carter http://orbited.org/blog/2007/08/juggernaut-is-a-bad-idea/#comment-77 Michael Carter Wed, 24 Oct 2007 03:00:41 +0000 http://www.orbited.org/blog/2007/08/juggernaut-is-a-bad-idea/#comment-77 <p>dan: The meaning is that Flash is a closed, proprietary system. You do not have control over it.</p> dan: The meaning is that Flash is a closed, proprietary system. You do not have control over it.

]]> By: dan http://orbited.org/blog/2007/08/juggernaut-is-a-bad-idea/#comment-76 dan Sat, 20 Oct 2007 13:20:48 +0000 http://www.orbited.org/blog/2007/08/juggernaut-is-a-bad-idea/#comment-76 <p>Hi! What do you mean in "4. In soviet Russia, you own flash".? Thx!</p> Hi! What do you mean in “4. In soviet Russia, you own flash”.? Thx!

]]> By: Matthew Desmarais http://orbited.org/blog/2007/08/juggernaut-is-a-bad-idea/#comment-16 Matthew Desmarais Tue, 28 Aug 2007 16:31:28 +0000 http://www.orbited.org/blog/2007/08/juggernaut-is-a-bad-idea/#comment-16 <p>Thanks for writing all of this down. Some of the points made in this article didn't sit very well with me when I read it, but I didn't get my mind around why. You did a good job of addressing the concerns that I had.</p> Thanks for writing all of this down. Some of the points made in this article didn’t sit very well with me when I read it, but I didn’t get my mind around why. You did a good job of addressing the concerns that I had.

]]> By: Web standards http://orbited.org/blog/2007/08/juggernaut-is-a-bad-idea/#comment-15 Web standards Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:57:32 +0000 http://www.orbited.org/blog/2007/08/juggernaut-is-a-bad-idea/#comment-15 <p>Thank you for this article. I think you're right. A lot of these newer techniques are simply not the best way to go. Not everyone can access them, and they're especially useless when it comes to search engines, in a lot of cases.</p> Thank you for this article. I think you’re right. A lot of these newer techniques are simply not the best way to go. Not everyone can access them, and they’re especially useless when it comes to search engines, in a lot of cases.

]]> By: Orbited Blog » Blog Archive » Why Orbited Doesn’t Suck http://orbited.org/blog/2007/08/juggernaut-is-a-bad-idea/#comment-13 Orbited Blog » Blog Archive » Why Orbited Doesn’t Suck Mon, 27 Aug 2007 18:44:40 +0000 http://www.orbited.org/blog/2007/08/juggernaut-is-a-bad-idea/#comment-13 <p>[...] Juggernaut – Juggernaut is a Comet solution for Ruby on Rails. It nearly disqualifies itself straight-up, for relying on embedded Flash to make a connection to the client. The Juggernaut developers claim that this is better because it’s not a hack (as the long-polling or iframe transports ostensibly are), but this seems pretty bogus; Flash is not designed for passing events from a server into browser-side javascript, as far as I can tell, so using it for that seems equally hackish to me. I am no fan of Ruby on Rails, and there’s no way that I can tell to use Juggernaut from my Python applications, so it’s out as far as I’m concerned. [Update, 2007-08-27: Michael expounded on these ideas in a long post.] [...]</p> [...] Juggernaut – Juggernaut is a Comet solution for Ruby on Rails. It nearly disqualifies itself straight-up, for relying on embedded Flash to make a connection to the client. The Juggernaut developers claim that this is better because it’s not a hack (as the long-polling or iframe transports ostensibly are), but this seems pretty bogus; Flash is not designed for passing events from a server into browser-side javascript, as far as I can tell, so using it for that seems equally hackish to me. I am no fan of Ruby on Rails, and there’s no way that I can tell to use Juggernaut from my Python applications, so it’s out as far as I’m concerned. [Update, 2007-08-27: Michael expounded on these ideas in a long post.] [...]

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