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by hombre_fatal 2386 days ago
I don't even think source code access is the most important part of the browser's dev console. Consider the network tab instead, being able to see exactly where your bandwidth is being spent and why.

This to me makes the browser vastly preferable to native apps. I didn't realize that the desktop app I use to easily translate languages[0] sends every keystroke to Google Analytics until I had to bother installing a proxy. Meanwhile this analysis is just an Opn-Cmd-I away in the browser.

[0]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/translate-tab/id458887729

1 comments

Totally agreed -- and I don't think WASM will change any of that.

The good parts of the web in terms of debugging is the separation of concerns -- having separate interfaces for CSS, HTML, network requests, and the DOM, and having each of those interfaces be relatively inspectable.

I am a little worried about frameworks that target WASM spitting everything onto a Canvas, bypassing HTML and CSS (coughQt*cought). That would be a substantial loss for the Open web. But I don't lose any sleep over the idea of replacing Javascript.