me: does <thing> support pipelining?
them: ???
me: explains pipelining
them: oh, streaming
NO
fuck you prefect.io, it's pipelining, not streaming
if you're not familiar with these terms here's how i understand them based on my computer science education:
pipelining: the overall process of a series of processing units that operate in parallel. this means that if one piece takes 2x as long as the next, then the next step will always be done running when the first is done. like a washing machine and dryer: you put stuff in the washer, then unload it and put it in the dryer, then unload the dryer. you can run both at the same time!
streaming: a mechanism of communicating data from one place to the next. this is a common way that pipelines push data from one step to the next. when you watch videos, it's streams data to you from the server because it's a continuous set of data that your computer shows off as a video on your display!