Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

Re:Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive by Fnoord on Monday December 04, 2017 @08:45AM (#15843707)

Progress is very subjective. Yes, its true that some "good" things have "bad" consequences. An example is that an average website in 2017 on an average computer + internet connection from 2007 is dog slow. But that doesn't mean these "good" things are not progressive. Rather, I'd describe it as 2 steps forward, 1 step backward. Take for example the smartphone/touchscreen phenomenon. It has its negative consequences. People are able to record anything (sound/video). They're using these things during traffic. But that doesn't mean there's no positive consequences. The end result is a nuanced list of + and - effects and there's no need to discount all the + or all the - with an extreme standpoint.

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Re:Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive by loup-vaillant on Monday December 04, 2017 @02:35PM (#15846731)

Let's weight the good and bad. First, what is possible today that wasn't then? I see only multimedia and games. Text forums like this one were totally possible in the 90's. They just weren't as pretty.

Then let's examine why stuff is so bloated now: is it because we have more features? For the most part we don't. It's just abstractions piled on top of each other, images, and ads.

I'm not even sure the costs are even related to the benefits.

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Re:Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive by csallen on Monday December 04, 2017 @03:56PM (#15847413)

I think you're focusing on the costs and neglecting many of the benefits. For example, just think about how much easier it is to learn to code nowadays, thanks to the proliferation of helpful websites that take a variety of approaches to teaching, many of which were enabled by web technologies. GitHub, JavaScript 30, Khan Academy, RunKit, Flexbox Defense, Codecademy, just to name a few. And think about how many more of these sites exist today than would have in the past, because more people are building them, they're much easier to build (again, thanks to new web technologies).

And this is just learning to code.

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Re:Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive by loup-vaillant on Monday December 04, 2017 @06:51PM (#15848656)

> I think you're focusing on the costs and neglecting many of the benefits.

Which of those costs actually enabled the benefits? Very few, I'd wager. Much of those were avoidable. Or would have been if the market wasn't so short sighted.

> GitHub, JavaScript 30, Khan Academy, RunKit, Flexbox Defense, Codecademy

I reckon some of this does require a scripting engine somewhere. But not all of it. I still believe your examples are possible without JavaScript (even without CSS). A REPL wouldn't need it, if you have the server do the computation (within limits to prevents DOS attacks). It just wouldn't be as pretty.

But that would be unwise. Many of those really are applications, and they deserve a proper application platform. Which the web isn't, despite herculean efforts to the contrary.

A proper application platform needs to give access to simple, relatively low level constructs. Something like web assembly, a raster viewport, input, and sound. Meaning, a virtual machine. Browsers are becoming such anyway. Also, no text handling, no style sheet, no programming language. Let the users implement a web browser on top of the application platform if they really want to.

Actually, I do hope we eventually turn this madness on its head, and implement browsers on top of web assembly engines. This would drastically reduce the effective attack surface (good for security), and do wonders for portability. Wouldn't solve the independence problem, though.

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