Real-Time

ELI5 - The Vibe Check

Real-time means your app updates the instant something happens, not when the user refreshes the page. A chat message that appears the second your friend hits send, a stock ticker that never sits still, a collaborative doc where you see the other person's cursor move, none of that works if the app is just quietly polling a server every 30 seconds and hoping for the best.

Real Talk

Real-time, or near-real-time, describes systems that deliver data updates to clients with minimal latency after an event occurs, typically implemented via WebSockets, Server-Sent Events, or long polling, rather than traditional request-response polling. It underpins chat applications, live dashboards, multiplayer collaboration tools, and trading systems, and introduces its own challenges around connection management, backpressure, and conflict resolution when multiple clients edit the same state concurrently.

Show Me The Code

const socket = new WebSocket('wss://api.example.com/live')
socket.onmessage = (event) => {
  const update = JSON.parse(event.data)
  renderLatestPrice(update)
}

When You'll Hear This

"We need this to feel real-time, polling every 10 seconds isn't going to cut it." / "Supabase Realtime handles the WebSocket plumbing so we didn't have to."