🔗 Lies I was told about collaborative editing, part 2: Why we don't use Yjs

The common belief that CRDTs like Yjs are essential for seamless collaborative editing faces scrutiny in this article. It argues that the algorithmic complexity and architectural choices behind Yjs compromise performance and reliability. By highlighting serious issues encountered when implementing Yjs—including document corruption and high latency—the author recommends a simpler alternative that meets necessary editing capabilities with far fewer complications.

The article explains a lightweight solution that leverages the prosemirror-collab library, achieving required functionality with just 40 lines of code. This solution avoids the pitfalls seen in Yjs, such as performing excessive document re-creation on every keystroke, and emphasizes the importance of a more straightforward approach that could significantly improve user experience with collaborative editing.