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Although I share the sentiments the author has against Python and Cloud, calling it JS a "backend" of the data science stack is a non-trivial stretch. It's obvi

Although I share the sentiments the author has against Python and Cloud, calling it JS a "backend" of the data science stack is a non-trivial stretch. It's obviously a front-end. Having a fast GPU computation is great for frontend as well as backend, so don't worry it to be wasted. I'd rather expect cloud vendors adopt JS/wasm as a UDF / extension for their compute offering. BigQuery does this already [1]. S3 Object lambda [2] is close. Please leave web browser as a frontend. [1] https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs/reference/standard-sql/user-defined-functions https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs/reference/standard-sq... [2] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/introducing-amazon-s3-object-lambda-use-your-code-to-process-data-as-it-is-being-retrieved-from-s3/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/introducing-amazon-s3-objec...

nine_k 5y ago
It can be a "backend" the way Python is a "backend". It's the glue, the developer-facing API. The heavy lifting will likely be done by cross-compiling C++ and Fortran code to WASM, and expecting it to be JITted, or maybe rewriting portions of in in JS where JIT is already good. Whoever is first to implement a well-working GPGPU interface in the browser, wins.
- lasagnaphil 5y ago
  WASM won’t be performant enough for heavy matrix computations because it wouldn’t be able to use SIMD (in its current state). There’s a WASM SIMD proposal in the works but it’s only for 128-bit vectors and I’m not sure it will perform the same as native code.
rektide 5y ago
just one example: deno has webgpu support. whatever mentality you hold now, however you think if he today, I expect almost all of us need to loosen our preconceptions rather quickly. as for what the browser ought to be, I again think you should lower your preconceptions & not be so opposed to the browser exploring we data crunching roles. especially as folk explore moving away from big cloud being near-exclusive means of computing.
- flakiness 5y ago
  That's one attitude. I'm on the other side where having low expectation to the browser technology. People claim a lot on Web and Browser but it takes extremely wrong to get the fruit. I'm happy to be wrong eventually and will take it if it does come true. But until then, I'd stick on the pragmatic side. That's said, someone has to chase the ambition to make it happen. Maybe I was being too negative and discouraging here.

nine_k 5y ago

It can be a "backend" the way Python is a "backend". It's the glue, the developer-facing API. The heavy lifting will likely be done by cross-compiling C++ and Fortran code to WASM, and expecting it to be JITted, or maybe rewriting portions of in in JS where JIT is already good. Whoever is first to implement a well-working GPGPU interface in the browser, wins.

lasagnaphil 5y ago
WASM won’t be performant enough for heavy matrix computations because it wouldn’t be able to use SIMD (in its current state). There’s a WASM SIMD proposal in the works but it’s only for 128-bit vectors and I’m not sure it will perform the same as native code.

rektide 5y ago

just one example: deno has webgpu support. whatever mentality you hold now, however you think if he today, I expect almost all of us need to loosen our preconceptions rather quickly. as for what the browser ought to be, I again think you should lower your preconceptions & not be so opposed to the browser exploring we data crunching roles. especially as folk explore moving away from big cloud being near-exclusive means of computing.

flakiness 5y ago
That's one attitude. I'm on the other side where having low expectation to the browser technology. People claim a lot on Web and Browser but it takes extremely wrong to get the fruit. I'm happy to be wrong eventually and will take it if it does come true. But until then, I'd stick on the pragmatic side. That's said, someone has to chase the ambition to make it happen. Maybe I was being too negative and discouraging here.