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WASM Is the New CGI
31–40 of 311 posts
Re: WASM Is the New CGI
#32Can 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…
The replacement for those technologies is arguably javascript. WASM is more focused on performance by providing less abstractions and an instruction set closer to assembly (hence the name).
The issue with those older technologies was that the runtime itself was a third-party external plugin you had to trust, and they often had various security issues. WASM however is an open standard, so browser manifacturers can directly implement it in browser engines without trusting other third-parties. It is also much more restricted in scope (less abstractions mean less work to optimize them!) which helps reducing the attack surface.
Re: WASM Is the New CGI
#33I 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…
You’re assuming a lot of things in this comment, it seems like you believe every software engineer is working with the same constraints, language and platform as yourself.
Re: WASM Is the New CGI
#34I 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…
At the end of the day, all you are doing is syncing state with the server. In the future, you'll have a local state and a server state and the only server component is a sync Wasm binary hehe. Still, you'll be coding your front-end with Wasm/Rust, so get in on the Rust train :)
Rust frontend dev is not going to become mainstream, no matter what.
Re: WASM Is the New CGI
#35putting everything in WASM really drains the battery on mobile.
I hate WASM heavy websites as often they have bloat of javascript and site is very slow, especially during scrolling, zooming due to abuse of event listeners and piss poor coding discipline.
I kinda miss sometimes server rendered index.php
Re: WASM Is the New CGI
#36I 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…
It's difficult or impossible to compile many languages into JavaScript. WASM is more general.
Theoretically or because of the tooling landscape?
Re: WASM Is the New CGI
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bad take. Yes, you can probably optimize a lot of algos in JS such that they are pretty fast, but THAT is cumbersome. I'd much rather write the things I need to go fast in a language that's good at that (I use C for this). I'm currently working on a toolpath optimizer and I'm compiling just the optimizer function to WASM, it's a couple kilobytes and will probably be an order of magnitude faster than the JS implementa…
probably be an order of magnitude faster than the JS implementation What makes you think so?
Off the rip because I didn't spend time to make the JS implementation keep all of it's data in a typed array that I manually manage, because it's tedious to do that in JS and it's straightforward in C. Though I'm betting there are other benefits I'll get from -O2 and static analysis.
Re: WASM Is the New CGI
#38Can 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.
Re: WASM Is the New CGI
#39I 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…
You’re assuming a lot of things in this comment, it seems like you believe every software engineer is working with the same constraints, language and platform as yourself.
No. I say we could build the same dev experience to non-js coders by offering them compile-2-js tools instead of compile-2-wasm tools.
Re: WASM Is the New CGI
#40I 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’m not sure I’d call Figma local first. If I’m offline or in a spotty wifi area, I can’t load my designs. And unless it’s recently changed, if you lose wifi and quit the browser after some edits, they won’t be saved.
That's intentional: they need you and your data tied to the server to make money. But there's no reason why it couldn't be local first (except the business model), since the bulk of execution is local.
Incidentally, I think that's why local-first didn't take off yet: it's difficult to monetize and it's almost impossible to monetize to the extent of server-based or server-less. If your application code is completely local, software producers are back to copy-protection schemes. If your data is completely local, you can migrate it to another app easily, which is good for the user but bad for the companies. It would be great to have more smaller companies embracing local-first instead of tech behemoths monopolizing resources, but I don't see an easy transition to that state of things.