D could catch this wave: web assembly

[Joakim via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 19 June 2015 at 15:52:09 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad 
wrote:
>> across sites.  That does nothing to integrate the old 
>> page/hyperlink model of the web with the new dynamic HTML5 
>> model, but as Nick said, simply piles more of the dynamic 
>> stuff on top.
>
> Actually, it does, as the logic is moved more into elements. 
> Like Angular and Polymer.

I probably haven't been clear enough about what I mean.  The 
original model for the web was a bunch of hyperlinked 
pages/documents.  But that model increasingly breaks down as you 
make the page more dynamic.  What are you linking to anymore: a 
page, an app, or a widget within the app?  Now you have to freeze 
all state within an app then link to it, like the generated links 
on Google Maps or when you save a document in Word.

As the browser tries to mesh these two worlds, the old-fashioned 
static hyperlinked pages and the new dynamic widgets of AJAX and 
HTML5, rifts crop up.  The recent web components efforts you 
highlight do not address this at all, they merely make it easier 
to build more dynamic webapps.  But in doing so, they actually 
bring the problems I'm talking about more to the fore.

>> That actually makes some sense for a document format, which is 
>> what HTML originally was.  It makes no sense for a vector 
>> graphics format like SVG, where efficiency is key.
>
> I'd think the opposite, that binary format makes sense for PDF 
> since it is an enduser format, but it is easier to debug when 
> text so it is probably text for the same reasons as SVG.

My point was that text makes some sense for the layout of a 
document format, but efficiency is key in vector graphics, so you 
always want to go binary there.

> For SVG I want flexibility and transparency. It would be 
> counterproductive if it was not in XML. Editing would be 
> horrible. And yes, I edit SVG by hand, PDF too. I don't think 
> I've ever used SVG or built PDF generators without manually 
> editing either format as raw text.

Then have SVG be an authoring format that is subsequently 
"compiled" down to an efficient binary encoding for distribution. 
There is _zero_ reason for text SVG to be the actual end-user 
format.  I bet a lot of the bloat issues that Wyatt pointed out 
are exactly because of this.

>> Because writing it once in HTML/CSS/JS takes you much longer 
>> than writing it in Java, while being less responsive, then you
>
> Dunno about less responsive. Java apps often feel more sluggish 
> than well written web apps. Java is probably better for larger 
> programs, but most programs aren't large. Many programs are 
> just simple interfaces to online databases.

On mobile devices, I've been hit by plenty of sluggishness from 
both, just more so in the browser.

On Saturday, 20 June 2015 at 15:21:29 UTC, Kagamin wrote:
> High DPI settings screw up native UI too if it's not 
> pixel-precise, and ignoring user preferences is infraction, I'm 
> afraid. And this is where web actually shines: it's designed to 
> adapt gracefully to any user settings. Well, of course when 
> site design strays from how web was designed to work, it runs 
> into problems, that should be obvious.

The highest-DPI devices I use nowadays are mobile devices and, in 
my experience, websites are the ones who most often get it wrong. 
  That's usually related to tiny text, but that affects the 
overall layout too.

> I didn't really try to write java, but my impression is that 
> java usually requires huge amounts of boilerplate code, while 
> web is usually succinct.

I don't find HTML/CSS/JS succinct or easy to get right, the 
latter of which writing a Java/Android UI is at least better at.  
Of course, the Android devs had to go muff that up by adding XML 
into the mix.

> Dunno, I don't see there losses, maybe because they only happen 
> on mobile. Yeah, you said nothing about how this is related to 
> desktop as if it doesn't exist.

Pretty soon it won't. :) There are an estimated 2.5 billion 
smartphone users:

http://www.asymco.com/2014/04/07/postmodern-computing/

The highest estimates of desktop and laptop users I've seen don't 
crack 2 billion.  That means desktops are already a minority 
platform.  All the major mobile vendors are working on 
multi-window implementations which will soon allow you to plug 
your mobile device into a dock that connects to a 
monitor/keyboard/trackpad on your desk and run your mobile apps 
in a similar way to the desktop: Apple's just-announced 
multi-window feature to go along with their coming iPad Pro, 
Google's in-development multi-window implementation that has been 
found in the Android M build, and Microsoft's recently announced 
Continuum for mobile devices, that lets you plug your Windows 
Phone into a monitor and use Office with a desktop UI.

What this means is that people will soon be using their mobile 
devices for almost everything and desktop computers are 
effectively dead. :) Now, workstations were killed off by PCs and 
they still sell a couple million worldwide.  Similarly, there 
will always be a niche for PCs and mainframes.  It's just a small 
niche.