Subj : Queues vs. Sockets (battle resurrected)
To : Digital Man
From : MCMLXXIX
Date : Fri Oct 23 2009 03:01 pm
Re: Queues vs. Sockets (battle resurrected)
By: Digital Man to MCMLXXIX on Thu Oct 22 2009 22:57:22
> > Ok. You're in a room with a computer, and you're tasked with writing
> > internode (and eventually interbbs) comm for a chat room or game..
> >
> > There are two large buttons in front of you.
> >
> > 1st button: Queue() objects
> > 2nd button: Socket() objects
> >
> > which button would you push?
> >
> > Granted I've already pushed a button... I'm just not sure if it was the
> > right one. It's starting to make things very complicated.
>
> There's another button which is the File object.
>
> Anyway, Queues can't be used to communicate between BBSes (you need sockets
> or files to do that), so if you want to do interbbs, it might make sense to
> just use sockets. If you don't ever want to do interbbs, or you don't mind
> using a different communication mechanism between different nodes of your
> own BBS and nodes of other BBSes, then you can use Queues to communicate
> between your nodes. Another downside of Queues is you can't communicate
> with nodes running on other computers (for the rare BBS, like Vertrauen,
> that has nodes split across multiple systems), so you'll need to use Socket
> or File I/O for that case.
>
> So, if you want to support all use cases (inter and intra BBS, single and
> multi system BBSes) using a single mechanism, sockets are the way to go.
>
That is precisely the point of view I was looking for. Thank you.
Unfortunately that means I have to tear apart almost everything I've written so
far, which is why I posed the question rather than make any assumptions. It's a
shame to discard what I've written.
Queues are REALLY nice for internode (same system).. but that's never really
been the ultimate goal for any of this stuff.
