> why on earth are we still using simple numbers to describe which process to connect to? Why not use names instead.

Not super popular, but: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRV_record

ASalazarMX 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

It's a very unconvincing tale when the origin story of this service is that the author connected to the wrong backend because he used the wrong port. I can see nothing simpler and more straightforward than numbered ports. Even the SRV record seems unnecesary complex for most use cases.

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yjftsjthsd-h 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Yep, my immediate reaction was "because browsers refuse to support SRV records" (although I think there was some new variant that kinda worked?)

	▲	octopoc 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		True! But, you wouldn't just need SRV support in browsers--you'd need it in every part of your dev environment / stack that touches the network. If your backend talks to a database, then your backend needs to support SRV. So you need SRV support in your standard library and your browser. But at a larger level this tool just makes everything work so smoothly. If you have two services with the same name, it pops up a notification in the tray. If you start a new process with a different name, you don't have to configure SRV; the DNS just becomes available automatically. HTTPS is auto configured. That sort of thing. I think somebody could one day make something like this that was based on SRV, but it would still need all those niceties to make it work well for developers.