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Viewing a document on the web needs to be decidable. The original design of the web was HTML documents with forms. This IBM 3270 style design used the browser a
by pdkl95 7y ago
Viewing a document on the web needs to be decidable. The original design of the web was HTML documents with forms. This IBM 3270 style design used the browser as the user interface to server-side programs. The browser's job of presenting a document was decidable and the form submission, page load process allowed the user to understand and control the data sent to a server. The server learns what was in the form and URL when the user decided to click the submit button.
Moving the software into the browser improved latency, but questions like "Is this webpage doing something dangerous/annoying?" became undecidable. If we provably cannot determine if a webpage will halt without running it, we obviously cannot as any more complicated questions about the webpage's behavior. As long as webpages have access to a Turing complete language, the browser will be de facto an OS. Unfortunately, returning to a web of documents isn't going to happen anytime soon; too many people profit from this ability to run programs on other people's computers.
(Gary Bernhardt's amazing (and terrifying) talk "The Birth & Death of JavaScript"[1] was absurdist comedy, not a guide to future browser designs)
[1] https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of-javascript https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death...
- JohnFen 7y ago> Unfortunately, returning to a web of documents isn't going to happen anytime soon; too many people profit from this ability to run programs on other people's computers. Yes, I've resigned myself to this truth long ago. Since then, I've been watching the web get smaller and smaller as more and more websites break unless they're allowed to run code client side. I fully expect that the majority of the web will become inaccessible to me within my lifetime. Alas, the future does not always bring wonderful things!
- bawolff 7y agoDecideability is absolutely not the problem. Subjectivity is a problem - There is no objective definition of an obnoxious ad. I mean, behaviour of a website may be undecideable. Behaviour over the 5 minutes you're viewing it is. I dont think notions from computability theory are particularly enlightening here.
- nitrogen 7y agoThere is no way to know for sure that the minified JS on a website isn't sending every keystroke you enter into a password field before you click submit, until you run the JS.
- colejohnson66 7y agoWhy wouldn’t “deminifying” work? Then you just read the code.
- omnimus 7y agoFunnily enough Gary Betnhardt seems to only write and talk about javascript nowdays.