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The author explains why you might want to use Go instead at the end of the readme.

by kitd 1y ago

onion2k 1y ago
I don't think any of the use cases suggested really make sense though. For a compute-intense task like audio or video processing, or for scientific computing where there's likely to be a requirement to fetch a ton of data, the browser is the wrong place to do that work. Build a frontend and make an API that runs on a server somewhere. As for cryptography, trusting that the WASM build of your preferred library hasn't introduced any problems demonstrates a level of risk tolerance that far exceeds what most people working in cryptography would accept. Besides, browsers have quite good cryptographic APIs built in. :)
- tgv 1y ago
  > For a compute-intense task The browser often runs on an immensely powerful computer. It's a waste to use that power only for a dumb terminal. As a matter of fact, my laptop is 6 years old by now, and considerably faster than the VPS on which our backend runs. I let the browser do things such as data summarizing/charting, and image convolution (in Javascript!). I'm also considering harnassing it for video pre-processing.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    You can take advantage of that power via WebGPU, or WebGL if the browser is not yet up to it.
- preommr 1y ago
  > For a compute-intense task like audio or video processing, or for scientific computing where there's likely to be a requirement to fetch a ton of data, the browser is the wrong place to do that work. ... I mean... elaborate? Everytime I've heard somebody say this, it's always a form of someone stuck in the 90s/00s where they have this notion that browsers showing gifs is the ceiling and that real work can only happen on the server. Idk how common this is now, but a a few years ago (~2017) people would show projects like figma tha drew a few hundred things on screen and people would be amazed. Which is crazy, because things like webgl, wasm, webrtc, webaudio are insanely powerful apis that give pretty low level access. A somewhat related idea are people that keep clamoring for dom access in wasm because, again, people have this idea that web = webpage/dom, but that's a segway into a whole other thing.
  - chrisweekly 1y ago
    great points, agreed also "segway" is a scooter, "segue" is a narrative transition

The author explains why you might want to use Go instead at the end of the readme.

by kitd 1y ago

The author explains why you might want to use Go instead at the end of the readme.

I don't think any of the use cases suggested really make sense though. For a compute-intense task like audio or video processing, or for scientific computing where there's likely to be a requirement to fetch a ton of data, the browser is the wrong place to do that work. Build a frontend and make an API that runs on a server somewhere. As for cryptography, trusting that the WASM build of your preferred library hasn't introduced any problems demonstrates a level of risk tolerance that far exceeds what most people working in cryptography would accept. Besides, browsers have quite good cryptographic APIs built in. :)

tgv 1y ago
> For a compute-intense task The browser often runs on an immensely powerful computer. It's a waste to use that power only for a dumb terminal. As a matter of fact, my laptop is 6 years old by now, and considerably faster than the VPS on which our backend runs. I let the browser do things such as data summarizing/charting, and image convolution (in Javascript!). I'm also considering harnassing it for video pre-processing.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  You can take advantage of that power via WebGPU, or WebGL if the browser is not yet up to it.
preommr 1y ago
> For a compute-intense task like audio or video processing, or for scientific computing where there's likely to be a requirement to fetch a ton of data, the browser is the wrong place to do that work. ... I mean... elaborate? Everytime I've heard somebody say this, it's always a form of someone stuck in the 90s/00s where they have this notion that browsers showing gifs is the ceiling and that real work can only happen on the server. Idk how common this is now, but a a few years ago (~2017) people would show projects like figma tha drew a few hundred things on screen and people would be amazed. Which is crazy, because things like webgl, wasm, webrtc, webaudio are insanely powerful apis that give pretty low level access. A somewhat related idea are people that keep clamoring for dom access in wasm because, again, people have this idea that web = webpage/dom, but that's a segway into a whole other thing.
- chrisweekly 1y ago
  great points, agreed also "segway" is a scooter, "segue" is a narrative transition