The bottom line
A realtime API isn't a fast REST API — it's a different system with stateful connections, reconnection logic, ordering and delivery guarantees, and a scaling model where thousands of clients hold open connections at once. Done naively it works in a demo and falls over under real load or flaky mobile networks. Built deliberately, realtime becomes a dependable product capability — live collaboration, tracking and notifications that genuinely feel instant — instead of a fragile feature that breaks at scale.
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