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WASM Is the New CGI

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Re: WASM Is the New CGI

#201

Post by consteval »

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…

It truly depends on the application. If you have a LOB database-centered application that's pretty much impossible to make "local first".

Figma and other's work because they're mostly client-side applications. But I couldn't, for example, do that with a supply chain application. Or a business monitoring application. Or a ticketing system.

Re: WASM Is the New CGI

#202

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: WASM Is the New CGI

#203

Post by consteval »

torginus wrote: post #83
flohofwoe wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except with runtime safety, no installation process, no pointless scare popups when trying to run an app directly downloaded from the internet, and trivial distribution without random app store publishing rules getting in the way. In a way - yes - it's almost like it was before the internet, but mostly because other ways to distribute and run applications have become such a hassle, partly for security reasons, but mo…

Apps like these were incredibly common on Windows from the late 90s-early 2010s era. They could do all this (except for the sandboxing thing). You just downloaded a single .exe file, and it ran self-contained, with all its dependencies statically linked, and it would work on practically any system. On MacOS, the user facing model is still that you download an application, drop it in the Applications folder, and it wo…

Yes and Windows in that time period had massive issues with security and culture. The culture of downloading and running EXEs from the internet quickly caught up to everyone, and not in a good way.

Also the "big idea" is that those applications aren't portable. Now that primary computers for most people are phones, portable applications are much more important.

Re: WASM Is the New CGI

#204

Post by dspillett »

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…

> Can someone explain to me what the difference really is between WASM and older tech like Java Applets, ActiveX, Silverlight and Macromedia Flash

As well as the security model differences other are debating, and WASM being an open standard that is easy to implement and under no control from a commercial entity, there is a significant difference in scope.

WebAssemply is just the runtime that executes byte-code compiled code efficiently. That's it. No large standard run-time (compile in everything you need), no UI manipulation (message passing to JS is how you affect the DOM, and how you ready DOM status back), etc. It odes one thing (crunch numbers, essentially) and does it well.

Re: WASM Is the New CGI

#205

Post by anthk »

DougMerritt wrote: post #80
pdpi wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike ActiveX, Silverlight, or Flash, it's an open standard developed by a whole bunch of industry players, and it has multiple different implementations (where Java sits on that spectrum is perhaps a bit fuzzier). That alone puts it heads and shoulders above any of the alternatives. Unlike the JVM, WASM offers linear memory, and no GC by default, which makes it a much better compilation target for a broader range o…

> The whole industry has swung from fat clients to thin clients and back since time immemorial. The pendulum will keep swinging after this too. Indeed, graphics pioneer and all-around-genius Ivan Sutherland observed (and named) this back in 1968: "wheel of reincarnation "[coined in a paper by T.H. Myer and I.E. Sutherland On the Design of Display Processors, Comm. ACM, Vol. 11, no. 6, June 1968)] Term used to refer t…

Also http://www.winestockwebdesign.com/Essays/Eternal_Mainframe.h...

Re: WASM Is the New CGI

#206

Post by consteval »

VyseofArcadia wrote: post #184
jauntywundrkind wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've already mentioned ChromeOS as one counter-example. SerenityOS and Ladybird browser forked but until recently had a lot of overlap. LG's WebOS is used on a range of devices, derived from the Palm Pre WebOS released in 2009. The gigantic special OS is baggage which already has been cut loose numberous times. Yes you can run some fine light Linux OS'es in 4GB but man, having done the desktop install for gnome or kd…

I for one don't want to use web apps. I want the speed, convenience, and availability of native apps. I want to use applications that work if the internet isn't. I want to use applications that store my data locally. I want to use unglamorous applications that just work and use a native GUI toolkit instead of torturing a poor, overburdened document display engine into pretending it's a sane place for apps to run. Not…

The Web is portable, operating systems are not. Windows and Mac, being short-sighted, did this to themselves. Nobody can agree on anything, Microsoft is constantly deprecating UI frameworks, and it's not convenient at all to write local apps.

It's only JUST NOW we have truly portable UI frameworks. And it's only because of the Web.

Re: WASM Is the New CGI

#208

Post by tightbookkeeper »

IshKebab wrote: post #38
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…

ActiveX wasn't sandboxed so it was a security joke. Flash and Silverlight were full custom runtimes that a) only worked with a specific language, and b) didn't integrate well with the existing web platform. WASM fixes all of that.

But that’s missing a few steps. First they banned all those technologies saying JavaScript was sufficient, then only later made wasm.

There never was a wasm vs applet debate.

Re: WASM Is the New CGI

#210

Post by anthk »

PoignardAzur wrote: post #142
fallous wrote: post #19

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.

The witty version is known as Greenspun's tenth rule: "Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp." The general pattern is called the Inner-Platform Effect.

And a complete TCL spec.
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