# The genius of long polling

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-backend-engineering-show-with-hussein-nasser-847440/the-genius-of-long-polling
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-backend-engineering-show-with-hussein-nasser-847440/the-genius-of-long-polling.md
Podcast: [The Backend Engineering Show with Hussein Nasser](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-backend-engineering-show-with-hussein-nasser-847440)
Published: 2024-12-06T14:01:00+00:00
Episode link: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hnasr/episodes/The-genius-of-long-polling-e2rgnjs
Audio file: https://anchor.fm/s/1eb6d14/podcast/play/94968892/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2024-10-26%2F4a8f6294-7e06-f724-160d-d1caf1c9cc7b.m4a
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-backend-engineering-show-with-hussein-nasser-847440/episodes/the-genius-of-long-polling
Duration seconds: 1737

## Resource

Polling is the ability to interrogate a backend to see if a piece of information is ready. It can introduce a chatty system and as a result long polling was born. In this video I explain the beauty of this design pattern and how we can push it to its limit. 0:00 Intro 0:45 Polling 2:30 Problem with Polling 3:50 Long Polling 8:18 Timeouts 10:00 Long Polling Benefits 12:00 Make requests into Long Polling 17:36 Request Resumption 21:40 Summary

## Actions

- request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-backend-engineering-show-with-hussein-nasser-847440/episodes/the-genius-of-long-polling/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.
- read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-backend-engineering-show-with-hussein-nasser-847440/the-genius-of-long-polling.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.

A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed.

## Transcript

Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.