A team at work made the mistake of using WebSockets for a new application instead of old fashioned long polling. That resulted in 3+ months of hell debugging a buggy OSS library and fixing incompatibility issues for different mobile devices. And it broke again when a new OS update was released for iPhone. I did warn them not to use fairly new tech when old battle proven tech would solve the problem equally well. But the shiny new tech was too tempting for them and they paid the price for it. Which yet again confirms my #1 rule of thumb: always use tech that is old and boring unless there is no old tech that can do the job. If you want excitement, perhaps instead do kick boxing. That worked for me.
I definitely think it is. However “old” and “boring” are not precise terms. Perhaps a more accurate way to define the rule would be: “Prefer the oldest, battle proven, known to the team tech that can do the job.” For example if long polling and WebSockets are both capable of doing what you need to get done then pick long polling. Because it is older, more used, proven, used by many web applications out there, compatible with everything on the planet, and known to the team.
