8 ms·

Remember when you could hit "View Source" to see how the web was built? I don't like where this is going. Minification was bad enough, now we're going to be get

Remember when you could hit "View Source" to see how the web was built? I don't like where this is going. Minification was bad enough, now we're going to be getting more non-free blobs shoved into our browsers and this is being touted as a great new feature for us. It will end up being a tool of control and surveillance like always. This guy says it a bit more eloquently than I can: https://lobste.rs/s/wjtu7c/webassembly_mozilla_won#c_yqsej7 https://lobste.rs/s/wjtu7c/webassembly_mozilla_won#c_yqsej7

Cshelton 9y ago
Yes, it's not ideal but remember the ultimate goal, having universal apps that run at native speed and don't have to be constrained to the few large app stores. I'll give up view source for that, assuming the browser VM they run in is secure of course.
Darthy 9y ago
I think there is no technical hurdle that is stopping browser manufacturers from downloading the bytecode and showing a disassembled view of it. Plus nothing is stopping us from popularizing a trend where everybody puts a publicly discoverable debugging hints file (which would make the disassembly easier to read) with a fixed name next to all wasm files.
Houshalter 9y ago
Bullshit. Wasm can't do anything js can't. Especially with asm.js. Don't try to argue that minified or transpiled js is somehow more readable than wasm. At least it's easier to decompile in theory. It's absolutely not a "tool for surveillance". How exactly are you going to surveil anything with it? It's not even a replacement for js, or at least it shouldn't be used that way. No GC for instance. And if you are doing any of the silly things mentioned in your link you have no one to blame but yourself. Like accepting binary blobs without source from contractors. The link eventually admits you can't do a lot of stuff with js and should use native code. Great, lets just have everyone download and execute untrusted and unsandboxed code. In a way that is completely incompatible across platforms. Maybe we can maked them locked behind "walled gardens" with a ridiculous tax while we're at it. Future generations will laugh at us from their completely wasm based PCs. Or we can always go back to the old way of doing anything interesting with a browser. By making proprietary, vulnerability ridden plugins. Don't you just miss the days of flash and java applets? Because surely that was a much better solution than wasm.
- icedchai 9y ago
  I hope future generations are going to laugh at what a what a kluge "web app" development was... but I'm not so sure. We'd have been better off fixing Java applets, instead of reinventing the wheel. So now 20 years later, we're cross compiling C...
  - snomad 9y ago
    After 20 years of web dev, I gave native development (UWP) a shot. I kinda assumed that after so much time Microsoft would have windows development dialed in and it would be sane. Ha!
    - infinityplus1 9y ago
      How was your experience with UWP?
      - snomad 9y ago
        Overall, not sure, part frustrated, part liking it. Good C# is fantastic Between the Community Toolkit and Telerik's UWP UI, there are some fantastic open source controls available for reuse. Bad XAML editing can be frustrating, the visual state setters don't recognize the local properties, which leads to a lot of copy/paste and no help w/errors (e.g. TextBlock.RelativePanel.AlignTopWithPanel is wrong and should be TextBlock.(RelativePanel.AlignTopWithPanel), but intellisense gives no hint). Using the new x:Bind I couldn't get blend to show design time data, it only showed the property names, which is misleading when you have a long property name holding a small string value. There are a whole bunch of other little frustrations like those 2 above, the net effect of which is a minor aversion to the XAML side of things.
- MrPatan 9y ago
  > flash and java applets And ActiveX! you probably repressed the memory of that one, sorry to remind you.
- buu700 9y ago
Sean1708 9y ago
https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/master/FAQ.md#will-webassembly-support-view-source-on-the-web https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/master/FAQ.md#wil... The text form of Wasm looks like it's going to be far easier to read than minified JS.
- hackcasual 9y ago
  The addition of type information already makes it more explicit.
- azakai 9y ago
  The text format has been finalized, you can see examples of it here: http://webassembly.org/docs/text-format/ http://webassembly.org/docs/text-format/
AriaMinaei 9y ago
This was discussed literally the day wasm was announced, and Brendan Eich weighed in too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9734947 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9734947
- dullgiulio 9y ago
  Thank you for the link, you too had a very nice discussion. However I find unsetting how Eich ends up defending WASM by hoping it's not too successful (used only in some hot pathes, not full blob apps.) That's frankly quite ridiculous: I predict a full apps adoption pretty soon. Just wait for more mainstream languages to support it. The open web in the sense the OP meant has been dead for a while, WASM is just another tombstone.
  - Klathmon 9y ago
    You'll notice that basically everyone involved with WASM agrees that it won't be used for full applications any time soon if ever. It's only people who aren't as involved who are calling for it. WASM is not a replacement for javascript, and it's not trying to be. You won't be writing entire applications in whatever you compile to WASM, it's not how it's designed, it's not how it's meant to run, and it's worse in most ways than just compiling your favorite language to javascript (which has been possible for a long time now, but nobody uses it because it's such a leaky abstraction). The open web is flourishing more than ever, and WASM is keeping that alive with it's "text" mode.
    - dullgiulio 9y ago
      Nothing is harder to predict than the future. ;) I can also run objdump against Microsoft Office. Does it make it open?
jakelazaroff 9y ago
What I don't understand about this viewpoint is, don't all of these caveats also apply to native apps?
- peatmoss 9y ago
  Political views aside, I think I understand a key difference in that, presuming one wants to run Free (Libre) software, it's relatively easy to do if you are running one of the FSF recommended Linux distributions. By contrast, if in common usage people are only running software compiled to Web Assembly, then: 1. You probably have some work to do to figure out the licensing of the code running in your browser. 2. The ability to look at the program logic for study or reuse is diminished in practice as compared to the early web when you could view source.
  - Klathmon 9y ago
    1. is identical on linux distros. How many licenses are you using right now? Probably 20+ distinct licenses as a lowball guess. It's not easy to figure this out, and if it's something you and others really want, i'm sure a standard could be thought up to be able to on-demand get a list of software licenses used in a project which could then be built into browsers similar to sourcemaps. 2. might be more possible with WASM than it is with minified JS since WASM has a text mode which is very readable.
    - peatmoss 9y ago
      1. Eh, if I'm running, say, Ubuntu and haven't turned on the non-free stuff I can make some reasonable assumptions about my baseline rights. 2. I don't think anyone is claiming minified JS is awesomely transparent. WASM is certainly worse than the unobfuscated, unminified JS, which until not long ago was the norm.
      - mbrock 9y ago
        WebAssembly in itself is not an enemy of freedom, as even Richard Stallman would agree. The bigger problem, which is also a problem with web scripts in general, is that browsers and script distributors generally make no effort to inform users about what scripts are running, whether they are proprietary or free software, etc. Mozilla should fix this!
angersock 9y ago
Author here of that comment here (thanks JordiGH!). It's really entertaining watching this subthread, let me tell you.

Cshelton 9y ago

Yes, it's not ideal but remember the ultimate goal, having universal apps that run at native speed and don't have to be constrained to the few large app stores. I'll give up view source for that, assuming the browser VM they run in is secure of course.

Darthy 9y ago

I think there is no technical hurdle that is stopping browser manufacturers from downloading the bytecode and showing a disassembled view of it. Plus nothing is stopping us from popularizing a trend where everybody puts a publicly discoverable debugging hints file (which would make the disassembly easier to read) with a fixed name next to all wasm files.

Houshalter 9y ago

Bullshit. Wasm can't do anything js can't. Especially with asm.js. Don't try to argue that minified or transpiled js is somehow more readable than wasm. At least it's easier to decompile in theory. It's absolutely not a "tool for surveillance". How exactly are you going to surveil anything with it? It's not even a replacement for js, or at least it shouldn't be used that way. No GC for instance. And if you are doing any of the silly things mentioned in your link you have no one to blame but yourself. Like accepting binary blobs without source from contractors. The link eventually admits you can't do a lot of stuff with js and should use native code. Great, lets just have everyone download and execute untrusted and unsandboxed code. In a way that is completely incompatible across platforms. Maybe we can maked them locked behind "walled gardens" with a ridiculous tax while we're at it. Future generations will laugh at us from their completely wasm based PCs. Or we can always go back to the old way of doing anything interesting with a browser. By making proprietary, vulnerability ridden plugins. Don't you just miss the days of flash and java applets? Because surely that was a much better solution than wasm.

icedchai 9y ago
I hope future generations are going to laugh at what a what a kluge "web app" development was... but I'm not so sure. We'd have been better off fixing Java applets, instead of reinventing the wheel. So now 20 years later, we're cross compiling C...
- snomad 9y ago
  After 20 years of web dev, I gave native development (UWP) a shot. I kinda assumed that after so much time Microsoft would have windows development dialed in and it would be sane. Ha!
  - infinityplus1 9y ago
    How was your experience with UWP?
    - snomad 9y ago
      Overall, not sure, part frustrated, part liking it. Good C# is fantastic Between the Community Toolkit and Telerik's UWP UI, there are some fantastic open source controls available for reuse. Bad XAML editing can be frustrating, the visual state setters don't recognize the local properties, which leads to a lot of copy/paste and no help w/errors (e.g. TextBlock.RelativePanel.AlignTopWithPanel is wrong and should be TextBlock.(RelativePanel.AlignTopWithPanel), but intellisense gives no hint). Using the new x:Bind I couldn't get blend to show design time data, it only showed the property names, which is misleading when you have a long property name holding a small string value. There are a whole bunch of other little frustrations like those 2 above, the net effect of which is a minor aversion to the XAML side of things.
MrPatan 9y ago
> flash and java applets And ActiveX! you probably repressed the memory of that one, sorry to remind you.
buu700 9y ago

Sean1708 9y ago

https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/master/FAQ.md#will-webassembly-support-view-source-on-the-web https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/master/FAQ.md#wil... The text form of Wasm looks like it's going to be far easier to read than minified JS.

hackcasual 9y ago
The addition of type information already makes it more explicit.
azakai 9y ago
The text format has been finalized, you can see examples of it here: http://webassembly.org/docs/text-format/ http://webassembly.org/docs/text-format/

AriaMinaei 9y ago

This was discussed literally the day wasm was announced, and Brendan Eich weighed in too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9734947 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9734947

dullgiulio 9y ago
Thank you for the link, you too had a very nice discussion. However I find unsetting how Eich ends up defending WASM by hoping it's not too successful (used only in some hot pathes, not full blob apps.) That's frankly quite ridiculous: I predict a full apps adoption pretty soon. Just wait for more mainstream languages to support it. The open web in the sense the OP meant has been dead for a while, WASM is just another tombstone.
- Klathmon 9y ago
  You'll notice that basically everyone involved with WASM agrees that it won't be used for full applications any time soon if ever. It's only people who aren't as involved who are calling for it. WASM is not a replacement for javascript, and it's not trying to be. You won't be writing entire applications in whatever you compile to WASM, it's not how it's designed, it's not how it's meant to run, and it's worse in most ways than just compiling your favorite language to javascript (which has been possible for a long time now, but nobody uses it because it's such a leaky abstraction). The open web is flourishing more than ever, and WASM is keeping that alive with it's "text" mode.
  - dullgiulio 9y ago
    Nothing is harder to predict than the future. ;) I can also run objdump against Microsoft Office. Does it make it open?

jakelazaroff 9y ago

What I don't understand about this viewpoint is, don't all of these caveats also apply to native apps?

peatmoss 9y ago
Political views aside, I think I understand a key difference in that, presuming one wants to run Free (Libre) software, it's relatively easy to do if you are running one of the FSF recommended Linux distributions. By contrast, if in common usage people are only running software compiled to Web Assembly, then: 1. You probably have some work to do to figure out the licensing of the code running in your browser. 2. The ability to look at the program logic for study or reuse is diminished in practice as compared to the early web when you could view source.
- Klathmon 9y ago
  1. is identical on linux distros. How many licenses are you using right now? Probably 20+ distinct licenses as a lowball guess. It's not easy to figure this out, and if it's something you and others really want, i'm sure a standard could be thought up to be able to on-demand get a list of software licenses used in a project which could then be built into browsers similar to sourcemaps. 2. might be more possible with WASM than it is with minified JS since WASM has a text mode which is very readable.
  - peatmoss 9y ago
    1. Eh, if I'm running, say, Ubuntu and haven't turned on the non-free stuff I can make some reasonable assumptions about my baseline rights. 2. I don't think anyone is claiming minified JS is awesomely transparent. WASM is certainly worse than the unobfuscated, unminified JS, which until not long ago was the norm.
    - mbrock 9y ago
      WebAssembly in itself is not an enemy of freedom, as even Richard Stallman would agree. The bigger problem, which is also a problem with web scripts in general, is that browsers and script distributors generally make no effort to inform users about what scripts are running, whether they are proprietary or free software, etc. Mozilla should fix this!

angersock 9y ago

Author here of that comment here (thanks JordiGH!). It's really entertaining watching this subthread, let me tell you.