3 ms·

People could be perfectly happy with today's performance levels (or tomorrow's, or yesterday's) if the prevailing systems were designed to serve and empower the

People could be perfectly happy with today's performance levels (or tomorrow's, or yesterday's) if the prevailing systems were designed to serve and empower them, rather than to exploit them. The market wants people to want "more features and faster execution." The market doesn't care what it's selling per se. If the web-browser-as-OS seems like an inevitability in that context, it's only a side-effect, and one that could change at any time. WASM also impacts the labor market, as you mention. But it's not, as we might like to believe, because programmers' demands for more freedom and expressive power are being honored; it's because, as monkmartinez suggests [0] (and maybe this is what you mean by "floodgates"), companies would rather not be limited to a smaller human-resource pool when developing web properties. If I sound a little dystopian, it might be because I'm currently reading Cyber-Marx [1], an insightful book from 1999 about the "information revolution" and its relation to capital. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14342983 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14342983 [1] http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/66mwg3pc9780252067952.html http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/66mwg3pc9780252...

andrewflnr 9y ago
I'm a little confused by this comment. Are you saying it would be better for the world if companies were limited to a "smaller human-resource pool"? Does anyone besides JS devs benefit from that scenario?
- monkmartinez 9y ago
  Me too, but I am drawing a different conclusion. Perhaps he/she means that companies ultimately drive the market forward as it were. I mean, most people do not strictly trade time/effort for no reward. Reward can mean different things for different people, but I would tend to land on most people trade labor for money. Companies invest in tools all the time, especially internet companies. They would have the bigger reason to get behind efforts that increase the share of developers available.
  - gavinpc 9y ago
    Yes, I'm saying that this would not move forward without buy-in from non-programmers with influence. But language isn't the only thing. WASM is (correct me if I'm wrong) harder to reverse engineer, which must matter to those same stakeholders.
    - dr_zoidberg 9y ago
      I don't see how it would be harder to RE than .NETs IL (which is pretty easy to RE), or even plain old assembly -- which looks horrible, but can be disassembled and even "decompiled" (which generates a potential C source from the disassembled bytecode).

andrewflnr 9y ago

I'm a little confused by this comment. Are you saying it would be better for the world if companies were limited to a "smaller human-resource pool"? Does anyone besides JS devs benefit from that scenario?

monkmartinez 9y ago
Me too, but I am drawing a different conclusion. Perhaps he/she means that companies ultimately drive the market forward as it were. I mean, most people do not strictly trade time/effort for no reward. Reward can mean different things for different people, but I would tend to land on most people trade labor for money. Companies invest in tools all the time, especially internet companies. They would have the bigger reason to get behind efforts that increase the share of developers available.
- gavinpc 9y ago
  Yes, I'm saying that this would not move forward without buy-in from non-programmers with influence. But language isn't the only thing. WASM is (correct me if I'm wrong) harder to reverse engineer, which must matter to those same stakeholders.
  - dr_zoidberg 9y ago
    I don't see how it would be harder to RE than .NETs IL (which is pretty easy to RE), or even plain old assembly -- which looks horrible, but can be disassembled and even "decompiled" (which generates a potential C source from the disassembled bytecode).