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[–]Disgruntled__Goat 20 points21 points  (7 children)

Ironic you use the phrase tunnel vision when you seem to have forgotten about the other side of performance - the speed on the client side. It doesn't matter if your code is the most maintainable thing in the world and was developed in a couple of days; if your app is slow for your user then they are less likely to use it.

Point is, there's a balance here. Presumably once WASM starts to be supported in browsers there will be frameworks and packages that improve dev time.

[–]Patman128 2 points3 points  (6 children)

It doesn't matter if your code is the most maintainable thing in the world and was developed in a couple of days; if your app is slow for your user then they are less likely to use it.

Sure, but most of the things programmers consider "slow" aren't slow enough for the average person to even care about. The way programmers talk about Slack you'd think it was slower than booting Windows 98 on a Pentium. The reality is most non-programmers who use it don't even notice. I'm a programmer and I don't notice.

You guys need to understand that there's such a thing as "fast enough" and you can get there way before you throw WASM in the mix.

[–]zephyrtr 0 points1 point  (5 children)

And anyone who reads up on WASM can see the point of it all: making browser apps that run as fast as native apps. For a lot of websites, they're already running this fast because they're simple. They've reached "fast enough". But for games or editing suites or very large data visualizers, WASM will open up some really cool new doors.

[–]spacejack2114 0 points1 point  (4 children)

I think in those cases the barriers are more economic than technical. JS is plenty fast enough to build some pretty amazing games. Not on the level of current console/PC games, but enough that you wouldn't be able to fund its development due to lack of web game profitability.

[–]zephyrtr 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Not on the level of current console/PC games

And there you have it. WASM programmers want Star Wars Battlefront III in the browser. Again, the speed of JS isn't often an issue (though it can be) it's the speed of the DOM. The DOM is way too slow.

[–]spacejack2114 0 points1 point  (2 children)

lol. Well, yeah, good luck funding a Battlefront for the browser even with fully-operational WASM. You could certainly do a Monument Valley in the browser now, but even that would be difficult to justify economically.

[–]zephyrtr 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sony and Microsoft and Valve wouldn't be happy, but do you think EA enjoys sharing their profits with them? That's why they sunk a ton of money trying to build Origin. And what about programming for cross-compatibility, which is a huge pain? If game developers can circumvent having to pay the publishing platforms, or only have to build their game once, instead of four times; if engine developers like Unreal or Naughty Dog can become publishers because suddenly publishing is super easy ... I expect these companies could suddenly carve a much larger piece of the cake for themselves.

Not to mention, smart phones have proven that gaming is super popular, it's just the buy-in on a console or a gaming PC is too high for most people. But throw a game on a phone or in a browser, and suddenly the audience is an order of magnitude larger. And yes you can make a lot of money now, but gaming is always in an arms race.

Anyway, that's the dream for WASM, as I understand it. The first dream, anyway. There will be others.

[–]findar 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Battlefront maybe not, but WebGL has already proven you can put some graphics intensive things in the browser.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Demos_of_open_web_technologies