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.



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