WebAssembly: a binary format for the web

Post by Touche » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 2:58 AM UTC

Mikushi wrote: post #111

13years wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet, isn't much of the web already unreadable due to minification of JS source?

If you think minification does anything to prevent anyone from reading it you are mistaken. Is it harder? Yes. Impossible, not even close, just annoying. I've reversed engineer JS libraries with 20K LOC that were minified and uglified in less than a day, hardly what I consider a hurdle. Now, to have worked with asm.js recently, that's a whole different ball game. That is unreadable, at least without spending copious…

Post by netheril96 » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 3:05 AM UTC

zmmmmm wrote: post #113

luhn wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I honestly think that one of the key ingredients to the success of the web is that just about any web page you can see, just about anyone with modest knowledge can trivially work out how it was done. Not really. Almost all websites obfuscate/minify their Javascript now, making manually interpreting the code much less than "trivial." I think WebAssembly will be no worse to figure out than obfuscated Javascript.

I think it will be much worse. Minified Javascript is pretty easy to turn back into something moderately understandable just by "prettifying" it. I do this all the time. It works pretty well because it started as Javascript, so turning it back into Javascript has a relatively clean mapping. WebAssembly will have started as some other language or even as no language at all - there may be no mapping back to anything Ja…

Post by no1youknowz » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 3:10 AM UTC

nv-vn wrote: post #122

no1youknowz wrote: post #114

I am someone who makes a living having a SaaS that clients use. I've had clients who have tried to "clone" my work, but eventually come back because they couldn't figure out the backend code or scale. I would love something that is the equivalent of installing an app on a phone, that is using a compiled app in a browser. Where the source can't be viewed. Even better, if I can give a rich UX. By having access to the s…

So even though they can't succeed at 'stealing' your job by copying the code you still don't want them to have access?

Post by k3d3 » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 3:14 AM UTC

pippy wrote: post #98

haberman wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java applets were slow to load because fast loading was never made a priority. WebAssembly is prioritizing small size and fast loading. Java Applets were completely isolated from the surrounding web page, and vice-versa. I tried writing XEyes as a Java Applet back in the day, but the eyeballs could only follow the cursor while the cursor was directly on top of the applet's rectangle. WebAssembly operates on the singl…

The example in article had went from a GZIPed size of 4.1 MB to 3.0 MB. For the massive increase of obscurity the transferal optimization trade off isn't that great. But it's a double edged sword, I'd also wager obscurity would entice larger AAA game developers to start targeting web.

Post by threatofrain » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 3:38 AM UTC

13years wrote: post #107

zmmmmm wrote: post #97

As laudable as the goal of improving performance is, I hope this never takes off. Why? Because it will take about 5 minutes from 90% of the web to go from open, transparent, easily reverse engineerable source code to essentially giant blobs of secret binary code. People will pay lip service to performance but 99% of the reason that web sites will implement this will be to cover up their code, keep secret their implem…

Yet, isn't much of the web already unreadable due to minification of JS source?