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WASM Is the New CGI

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Re: WASM Is the New CGI

#11

Post by freetonik »

junto wrote: post #8

Can someone explain to me what the difference really is between WASM and older tech like Java Applets, ActiveX, Silverlight and Macromedia Flash, because they don’t really sound much different to me. Maybe I’m just old, but I thought we’d learnt our lesson on running untrusted third party compiled code in a web browser. In all of these cases it’s pitched as improving the customer experience but also conveniently push…

Not an answer, but I think it’s unfair to group Flash with the others because it was both the editor/compiler and the player were proprietary. I guess same applies to Silverlight at least.

Re: WASM Is the New CGI

#12

Post by thot_experiment »

rpcope1 wrote: post #4

So basically we're reinventing the JVM and it's ecosystem?

Sort of yes, but WASM is designed with a different set of constraints in mind that make more sense when you just want to shove the runtime into your whatever. Sometimes reinventing X with lessons learned is actually a great idea.

Re: WASM Is the New CGI

#13

Post by svieira »

smolder wrote: post #5
waynecochran wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The use of wasm makes sense to me in context of the article.

The article does not seem to support the title. You'll have to show me how it does. 'serverless' is a wholly different concept that doesn't have much to do with wasm. You could say it's CGI as a service, but that has nothing to do with wasm.

It's quite buried amid a lot of extra paragraphs expositing about WASM and the future of serverless functions in general, but the article does contain this quote:

> One of the many effect of how [WASM] modules are isolated is that you can "pause" a module, and save its memory as a data segment. A similar concept to a Snapshot of a virtual machine. You can then start as many copies of the paused module as you like. (As I tell friends, it's like saving your game in an emulator.)

> The snapshotted module has no extra startup time ...

> If we go back to thinking about our Application Server models; this allows us to have a fresh process but without paying the startup costs of a new process. Essentially giving us CGI without the downsides of CGI. Or in more recent terms, serverless without cold starts. This is how Wasm is the new CGI.

Re: WASM Is the New CGI

#14

Post by pulse7 »

TekMol wrote: post #10

I don't see WASM as a significant step forward. In fact, I question its purpose altogether. Before WASM you could already compile code from other languages into JavaScript. And have the same benefits as you have with WASM. The only benefit WASM brings is a bit faster execution time. Like twice the speed. Which most applications don't need. And which plain JavaScript offers about two years later because computers beco…

When computers become faster, WASM will still be twice the speed of JavaScript, because untyped languages limit the optimizations.

Re: WASM Is the New CGI

#15

Post by palmfacehn »

junto wrote: post #8

Can someone explain to me what the difference really is between WASM and older tech like Java Applets, ActiveX, Silverlight and Macromedia Flash, because they don’t really sound much different to me. Maybe I’m just old, but I thought we’d learnt our lesson on running untrusted third party compiled code in a web browser. In all of these cases it’s pitched as improving the customer experience but also conveniently push…

There have also been exploits of Chrome's JS sandbox. For me the greatest difference is that WASM is supported by the browser itself. There isn't the same conflict of interest between OS vendors and 3rd party runtime providers.

Re: WASM Is the New CGI

#16

Post by tptacek »

junto wrote: post #8

Can someone explain to me what the difference really is between WASM and older tech like Java Applets, ActiveX, Silverlight and Macromedia Flash, because they don’t really sound much different to me. Maybe I’m just old, but I thought we’d learnt our lesson on running untrusted third party compiled code in a web browser. In all of these cases it’s pitched as improving the customer experience but also conveniently push…

Java Applets and ActiveX had less-mediated (Applets, somewhat; ActiveX, not at all) access to the underlying OS. The "outer platform" of WASM is approximately the Javascript runtime; the "outer platform" of Applets is execve(2).

Re: WASM Is the New CGI

#18

Post by jamil7 »

cheema33 wrote: post #6

I have a different take on this. I think local-first is the future. This is where the apps runs mostly within user's browser with little to no help from the server. Apps like Figma, Linear and Superhuman use this model very successfully. And to some degree Stackblitz does as well. If somewhat complex apps like Figma can run almost entirely within user's browser, then I think vast majority of the apps out there can. S…

I work on an iOS app like this right now, it predates a lot of these newer prebuilt solutions. There are some really nice features of working and building features this way, when it works well you can ignore networking code entirely. There are some tradeoffs though and a big one has been debugging and monitoring as well as migrations. There is also some level of end user education because the apps don’t always work the way they’re expecting. The industry the app serves is one in which people are working in the field, doing data entry on a tablet or phone with patchy connections.

Re: WASM Is the New CGI

#19

Post by fallous »

This article really does remind me of an old Law of Software that we used to invoke: Any sufficiently large and long-lived application will eventually re-implement the entire software stack it runs on, including the operating system.. and it will re-implement it poorly.

I'm unsure of the source for this Law, but it certainly proves correct more often than not.

Re: WASM Is the New CGI

#20

Post by pajamaboin »

junto wrote: post #8

Can someone explain to me what the difference really is between WASM and older tech like Java Applets, ActiveX, Silverlight and Macromedia Flash, because they don’t really sound much different to me. Maybe I’m just old, but I thought we’d learnt our lesson on running untrusted third party compiled code in a web browser. In all of these cases it’s pitched as improving the customer experience but also conveniently push…

This article is about WASM on the server so to answer your question it's different because it's not pushing computational cost from the server to the client. It can, but it doesn't in all cases. That's a huge difference. Others have already commented others (better sandboxing, isolation, etc)
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