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But really, a shared "money library" is exactly the same thing as a shared "money service" if everyone is using the same, latest version (which is easier to enforce with a networked "service").

The difference is in what's easy and what's hard. With a library, it's easy for everyone to run a different version, and hard for everyone to run the same version. With a service, it's easy for everyone to use the same version, and harder to use a different one (eg. creating multiple environments, and especially ephemeral "pull request" environments where you can mix and match for best automated integration and e2e testing).

But you can apply the same backwards-compatible API design patterns to a library that you would be applying to a service: no difference really. It's only about what's the time to detection when you break these patterns (with a library, someone finds out 2 years later when they update; with a service, they learn right away).





It’s definitely not the same thing.

Care to elaborate?



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