81–90 of 188 posts
I've written a series of articles about this topic: http://gabrielgambetta.com/fast_paced_multiplayer.html It's usually well received, perhaps because it builds the ideas from the ground up and does not include the words "What the fuck is wrong with you?" .
The phrase you're apparently concerned with here is preceeded by: "I swear you guys are like the fucking climate change deniers of network programming." I appreciate the sentiment in context.
I sometimes ask the question "how does the internet work?" in interviews. The vague and wrong answers I hear are astonishing. I'm looking for a basic understanding of the layering of TCP, or RDP, or ICMP (or anything actually) on top of IP. I don't get that level of insight much. The people who do have that insight usually can go deeper -- slow-start, BGP, etc. I wonder if we have a modern version of C.P. Snow's mid-…
The candidate has to be lucky to give you an answer that you happen to be expecting.
Reading this one could think you would be a fool to use TCP, yet some games (such as World of Warcraft) use TCP exclusively with no problems... What gives?
http://udt.sourceforge.net/doc/udt-2009.ppt
It details the problems of TCP, names most alternatives, and describes UDT work. I used to use UDT to eliminate TCP's problems. It's just bad design and the fact that changing it is usually a kernel modification. Hence, all these application-level alternatives with UDT being most general-purpose and one of best.
Be interesting to see if someone can adapt it to games. For now, probably best to use game-specific model as in article and comments. UDT for other stuff where you control how the app works on both ends. TCP where you control one side.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow, so many downvotes. Why is it considered non-constructive to point out a misleading title? The title is the first impression of an article, and most likely the authors are not aware of that ambiguity.
I didn't downvote, but calling that a misleading title is... misleading. Bias by profession is probably at play here, and it works the other way around: if I found a title titled "networking is hard" dealing with professional/social networking, I'd be confused at first too. I wouldn't call it misleading though, which is probably what triggered the downvotes.
Know this could affect searches, I might have said "or is networking in games just that hard?" Either way, first sentence of the quote tells reader what it's about so no time wasted really.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, Gaffer's original articles are well written, thoughtful and informative too. This is him ranting about the unfounded, negative and incorrect feedback he's been receiving about them from people who are willfully ignorant about networking. He could or should have replied with less attitude and more facts, though. I understood what and why he's saying what he is, but I didn't enjoy the negativity either.
His articles are excellent , and I've learned a lot from them myself. But I cannot sympathise with lowering the level of a technical discussion to personal insults.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This goes on the list of interview questions that's great at letting the interviewer claim pretty much any candidate they want to discard is unworthy of the position. It's the tech community's variant of a voting literacy test. If you ask me "how does the internet work" and what you really want is details on the underlying protocols, at around the range of TCP/IP, why aren't you actually asking for that? Your questio…
I disagree. It is like FizzBuzz for sysadmins. Being able to answer does not mean you should get the job, but an utter failure to answer should absolutely disqualify you. Once you make that basic determination, other questions should be used to judge actual fit for the job at hand.
Why would you give a "FizzBuzz for sysadmins" question to full-stack developers though?
I've written a series of articles about this topic: http://gabrielgambetta.com/fast_paced_multiplayer.html It's usually well received, perhaps because it builds the ideas from the ground up and does not include the words "What the fuck is wrong with you?" .
To be fair, Gaffer's original articles are well written, thoughtful and informative too. This is him ranting about the unfounded, negative and incorrect feedback he's been receiving about them from people who are willfully ignorant about networking. He could or should have replied with less attitude and more facts, though. I understood what and why he's saying what he is, but I didn't enjoy the negativity either.
I sometimes ask the question "how does the internet work?" in interviews. The vague and wrong answers I hear are astonishing. I'm looking for a basic understanding of the layering of TCP, or RDP, or ICMP (or anything actually) on top of IP. I don't get that level of insight much. The people who do have that insight usually can go deeper -- slow-start, BGP, etc. I wonder if we have a modern version of C.P. Snow's mid-…
This goes on the list of interview questions that's great at letting the interviewer claim pretty much any candidate they want to discard is unworthy of the position. It's the tech community's variant of a voting literacy test. If you ask me "how does the internet work" and what you really want is details on the underlying protocols, at around the range of TCP/IP, why aren't you actually asking for that? Your questio…
To see if you know what "how the internet works" even means. It's not an ambiguous question. If you respond with a description of Ruby on Rails, out you go!
UDP is for real time, continuous data, when you can't wait for your hardware to check for packet consistency.
A good example is paper mail versus a telephone call. The paper mail will land, but you don't care if your phone line cuts for 1 second. You just wait for the other guy to check if he can hear you
UDP is really much better when you want to have performance, especially when it comes to responsiveness and latency, but can afford to discard packets if they're not reliable.
I think it boils down to people not realizing how hard it is to transmit data over long distances, and that the protocol don't consider that data transmission is 100% good, because it never is. You can have a lot of interference in your network, but TCP will always manage to land those packets.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personally, I consider it very bad taste for you to sanctimoniously criticize Gaffer's tone to promote your own work. Sometimes a good rant is a very effective way to communicate. PS http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
You are probably right -- it was bad taste. I got a bit annoyed by the tone of the article; I don't think personal insults have a place in a technical discussion. I taught Computer Graphics for several years, and I came across two kinds of students: uninterested, so no matter what you do they probably won't learn; and interested and trying hard but not understanding, in which case it's my responsibility as the teache…
"Yeah... Gaffer is well-known as a guide, but also kind of horribly flawed. Question 1 for networking development: Do you need everything that TCP offers? If yes, then use TCP. You're not going to outperform TCP to do what it's good at. If not, read on."
This was a gilded +20 comment in the thread despite a) being nonsense and b) having the temerity to call his advice 'horribly flawed.' He is an expert with multiple shipped AAA games. And he prefixed his rant with RANT MODE ON. Sometimes you just need the cluestick.