ZeroMQ is just sockets
I like 0MQ a lot, but this is disingenuous. Let's break it down:<p>> <i>portability</i><p>Sockets are just as portable, more so on UNIX descendants where one can rely on relatively consistent socket APIs. Beyond that, almost every single language and runtime (Python, Ruby, Java, OCaml ...) provides a portable socket API.<p>> <i>message framing</i><p>Length-prefixed message framing winds up being 10-100 lines of code in almost any language/environment.<p>> <i>super fast asynchronous I/O</i><p>Sockets have this.<p>> <i>queuing</i><p>Sockets have buffers. The OS can use those buffers to implement flow control. This isn't the same as queueing, but the truth is that you rarely want blind background queueing of an indefinite number of messages that may or may not be delivered.<p>> <i>support for every bloody language anyone cares about</i><p>Just like sockets.<p>> <i>huge community</i><p>I don't think you can get 'huger' than the community around sockets.<p>> <i>price tag of zero</i><p>Seeing as socket libraries ship with everything, does that mean they have a time/resource cost of less than zero?<p>> <i>mind-blowing performance</i><p>Also, sockets.<p>> <i>protection from memory overflows</i><p>This has essentially nothing to do with a networking library. Plenty of environments have safe/efficient zero-copy chained byte buffer implementations/libraries.<p>> <i>loads of internal consistency checks</i><p>Library correctness isn't a unique feature.<p>> <i>patterns like pub/sub and request/reply, batching</i><p>Ah-ha! Here <i>finally</i> we get to the meat of it!<p>If you need <i>QUEUES</i>, including pub-sub, fanout, or any other <i>QUEUE</i>-based messaging structure, than 0MQ is better than sockets!<p>> <i>and seamless support for inter-thread transport as well as TCP and multicast</i><p>Inter-thread transport of already-serialized messages at the transport protocol layer doesn't make a ton of sense from an efficiency perspective.<p>> <i>ZEROMQ IS JUST SOCKETS</i><p>No, 0MQ is a lightweight network message queue protocol. It's not competing with sockets.