> A transaction in a blockchain isn't generally considered to have happened until it’s been included in a block & witnessed throughout the network.
For the sake of argument:
- It’s not meaningful for Apple Notes’ local edits to only be local. Sure they will render, but if a tree falls and no one hears is, did it make a sound? So let’s ignore local edits.
- A sentence in Apple Notes isn’t generally considered to have happened until it’s been rendered in every client and users can see it if they look.
Is that any less fair of a statement?? Is this game of nuanced wording selection at all meaningful tho to answer the question “Is Apple Notes a popular application of CRDTs?”
Meanwhile, keep in mind in a blockchain entire sets of nodes could be firewalled from each other for days, each subsection performing consensus and creating blocks. Days later the firewall could collapse and the nodes will need to automatically reconcile. If I abstract away the internal replicas and say the two “offline parts” of the CRDT need to keep “local” state and reconcile once both/all parts come back online. Would this abstraction help meet the strict definition?
I know you probably still strongly disagree - but coming from a non-academic background these word games around CRDTs hurt rather than help people’s understanding and use of them.
Instead we should be asking, how can we improve Git as a CRDT (where perfect "conflict-free" is the enemy of good enough) to better automerge more conflicts? How can we improve the general theory of CRDTs based on what we learned from implementations in “video game A”, “blockchain Z”, and “web application framework J”?
> - It’s not meaningful for Apple Notes’ local edits to only be local. Sure they will render, but if a tree falls and no one hears is, did it make a sound? So let’s ignore local edits.
Why would we ignore local edits? Notes is a note taking application. Not a communications platform. Local edits are the main point of the application.
> - A sentence in Apple Notes isn’t generally considered to have happened until it’s been rendered in every client and users can see it if they look
Of course it has! If I copy my favorite crepe recipe into a note on my phone, then open it up later, I don't care if that note has synced to my laptop. (Or anyone else I might be collaborating with). Local edits are meaningful and important.
The same is true of git. I use git locally on lots of projects that I don't even have any collaborators on, so I can track my work.
From the database standpoint, these are AP systems. They stay available (to reads and writes) in the face of network partitions. The blockchain is .. well, the blockchain is weird. But I think its closest to a CP system. You can't make transactions when you're disconnected from the chain. (If you could, you would risk double-spending).
I consider blockchains closer to traditional databases than eventually-consistent datastores built on CRDTs, because they have coordination and traditional atomic transaction semantics.
> A transaction in a blockchain isn't generally considered to have happened until it’s been included in a block & witnessed throughout the network.
For the sake of argument:
- It’s not meaningful for Apple Notes’ local edits to only be local. Sure they will render, but if a tree falls and no one hears is, did it make a sound? So let’s ignore local edits.
- A sentence in Apple Notes isn’t generally considered to have happened until it’s been rendered in every client and users can see it if they look.
Is that any less fair of a statement?? Is this game of nuanced wording selection at all meaningful tho to answer the question “Is Apple Notes a popular application of CRDTs?”
Meanwhile, keep in mind in a blockchain entire sets of nodes could be firewalled from each other for days, each subsection performing consensus and creating blocks. Days later the firewall could collapse and the nodes will need to automatically reconcile. If I abstract away the internal replicas and say the two “offline parts” of the CRDT need to keep “local” state and reconcile once both/all parts come back online. Would this abstraction help meet the strict definition?
I know you probably still strongly disagree - but coming from a non-academic background these word games around CRDTs hurt rather than help people’s understanding and use of them.
Instead we should be asking, how can we improve Git as a CRDT (where perfect "conflict-free" is the enemy of good enough) to better automerge more conflicts? How can we improve the general theory of CRDTs based on what we learned from implementations in “video game A”, “blockchain Z”, and “web application framework J”?