Why Google Sheets ported its calculation worker from JavaScript to WasmGC

Re:Why Google Sheets ported its calculation worker from Java... by michaelothomas on Thursday June 27, 2024 @11:59AM (#40811948)

I don't know absolute values but Excel still has several advantages which make it faster: - Excel is written in C++ and compiled natively which will be a bit faster than Java running on the JVM. And Java running as WasmGC is about 2x slower than Java on the JVM. - Sheets is limited to 4GB of RAM by the browser, Excel isn't. - C++ can do shared memory multi-threading, WasmGC cannot.

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Re:Why Google Sheets ported its calculation worker from Java... by tomComb on Thursday June 27, 2024 @01:20PM (#40812814)

Not sure why you’re comparing the c++ Excel to the browser version of sheets. It would make more sense to compare the native version of Excel to the native versions of sheets, ie. android iOS and chromeOS, and the browser sheets to the browser excel.

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Re:Why Google Sheets ported its calculation worker from Java... by adrianmonk on Thursday June 27, 2024 @01:53PM (#40813153)

Because they're replying to someone who wondered about the performance "compared to Native Microsoft Excel".

I'll add that browser Google Sheets and native Microsoft Excel are the fastest versions available (of each product).

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Re:Why Google Sheets ported its calculation worker from Java... by tomComb on Thursday June 27, 2024 @05:35PM (#40815382)

Why do you suggest that the web version of sheets is faster than the swift or Java versions? I haven’t tried them, and certainly haven’t benchmarked them, but I would imagine they’re faster.

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Re:Why Google Sheets ported its calculation worker from Java... by ehsankia on Thursday June 27, 2024 @02:42PM (#40813637)

I don't think there is a native desktop version of sheets? On ChromeOS, it's running the web version.

But yes I'd be curious to see how the web version of Excel does it.

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Re:Why Google Sheets ported its calculation worker from Java... by tomComb on Thursday June 27, 2024 @05:34PM (#40815371)

There is a version of sheets in both App Stores and I believe you can run the android version on chrome OS

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Re:Why Google Sheets ported its calculation worker from Java... by panzi on Thursday June 27, 2024 @11:52PM (#40817535)

Are these versions reimplemtations or like so many other apps just packaged websites? And are they full featured?

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Re:Why Google Sheets ported its calculation worker from Java... by ehsankia on Sunday June 30, 2024 @10:24PM (#40842069)

AFAIK the mobile versions are different, since the whole UX is designed for touch control and small screens. It's not full featured, there's a bunch of stuff that you can't do, or are very hard to reach, but that's the limitation of mobile control.

While you technically can run it on ChromeOS through the Android emulation, it's still a mobile app and you're far better off running the web version.

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Re:Why Google Sheets ported its calculation worker from Java... by fyrn_ on Thursday June 27, 2024 @09:32PM (#40816952)

Not claiming it has the same performance as real shared memory, But at least rough semantics can be had: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe... Can be read and written from multiple workers / main thread. Synconized with WASM atomics. Propgation speed of writes is undefined, likely to leave side channel attack mitigation options without spec-breaking.

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Re:Why Google Sheets ported its calculation worker from Java... by metadat on Thursday June 27, 2024 @11:26PM (#40817412)

> Sheets is limited to 4GB of RAM by the browser, Excel isn't.

Yet excel still limits the number of rows to 65536 or so.

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Re:Why Google Sheets ported its calculation worker from Java... by mfenniak on Thursday June 27, 2024 @11:39PM (#40817468)

Since Excel 2010 that limit is 1,048,576.

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Re:Why Google Sheets ported its calculation worker from Java... by metadat on Thursday June 27, 2024 @11:49PM (#40817522)

The last time I tried on a Mac a few years ago, it definitely couldn't handle that many. Maybe I was holding it wrong?

Even a million seems embarrassingly puny these days, considering a webpage can have a million checkboxes rendered in only a moment.

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Re:Why Google Sheets ported its calculation worker from Java... by archiewood on Friday June 28, 2024 @12:14AM (#40817648)

Excel for mac is (intentionally?) crippled.

Any serious Excel user has a PC.

One of the few places remaining where Windows > Mac

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Re:Why Google Sheets ported its calculation worker from Java... by supriyo-biswas on Friday June 28, 2024 @12:03AM (#40817589)

Please leave out the snide remarks in spirit of the HN guidelines[1].

> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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Re:Why Google Sheets ported its calculation worker from Java... by metadat on Friday June 28, 2024 @03:35PM (#40824349)

I appreciate your efforts to uphold quality, though I'm not sure I follow in this case. What do you take issue with?

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Re:Why Google Sheets ported its calculation worker from Java... by supriyo-biswas on Saturday June 29, 2024 @04:55AM (#40828823)

The "holding it wrong" part of it.

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Re:Why Google Sheets ported its calculation worker from Java... by fennecfoxy on Monday July 01, 2024 @09:37AM (#40845756)

Was that really "name calling"? It's a reference to antennagate and if anything, if you take it within the original context it's really a comment targeting the product Excel, not a person.

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Re:Why Google Sheets ported its calculation worker from Java... by jaakl on Friday June 28, 2024 @04:36AM (#40818793)

1M is xlsx file format limitation, and Excel on Mac can work with 1M just fine. But Excel is spreadsheet and not a database, so if you use it for so big datasets (anything over 1000 rows or so) you are very probably just using plain wrong tool.

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Re:Why Google Sheets ported its calculation worker from Java... by fulafel on Friday June 28, 2024 @12:13AM (#40817643)

You mean 4 GB WebAssembly limit I guess? There's no such general browser limit on JS side.

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Re:Why Google Sheets ported its calculation worker from Java... by pjmlp on Friday June 28, 2024 @04:56AM (#40818863)

You are forgetting many people use Excel on the Web nowadays, running on the same WebAssembly infrastructure as well.

And Microsoft would rather push everyone to the 365 Web subscription, than keeping selling native Excel, which by the way, nowadays uses plenty of React Native code instead of pure C++, exactly because of code portability to Office 365.

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Re:Why Google Sheets ported its calculation worker from Java... by water-your-self on Friday June 28, 2024 @09:45AM (#40820549)

So youre saying theres a market gap for a platform native sheets app?

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Re:Why Google Sheets ported its calculation worker from Java... by pjmlp on Friday June 28, 2024 @10:01AM (#40820688)

It is already covered by Android and iDevices.

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Re:Why Google Sheets ported its calculation worker from Java... by TRiG_Ireland on Friday June 28, 2024 @06:09PM (#40825826)

There's always Libre Office.

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