I heard often about activityPub being challenging to implement.

Now I know part of this is because, if you are building on activityPub, you want interop with existing platforms such as mastodon, and they do their own thing.

But ignoring that aspect, what is so hard about activityPub? What could have been done better?

I am a software developer, so feel free to use software dev concepts and terms when explaining. Thanks!

  • JackbyDevEnglish
    2·
    3 months ago

    Not even more than ~one page in and I see this

    IntransitiveActivity

    Inherits all properties from Activity except object.

    ??? That’s not how inheritance works in any language I’ve worked with lmao. One of the most basic types in the language and I’m already debating the pros and cons of different designs. Should I make the inheritance work with the type system and just return null for or should I add my own dummy types that aren’t in the spec so that it’s impossible to get an object property from IntransitiveActivities?