[austin-cheney]

Web Assembly has (at least in the past) a business problem.

In the past in nearly all prior discussions on this the greatest proponents for Web Assembly were developers who wanted to bring their technologies into the browser because they hate JavaScript. That is a horrible business case that is more effort than any value returned and no user will ever care about.

Worse, it won't ever work if you intended it to be a JavaScript replacement because it cannot integrate into the interaction of the surrounding page, because it is a sandbox without compromise. This line of wishful thinking instills false hope and just pisses off everyone else, which slows adoption among other languages. The Web Assembly effort has been very clear about this from the very beginning, but people believe what they want to believe even after this has been clarified dozens of times.

There are absolutely valid business cases behind Web Assembly though, here are some:

* circumventing iphone restrictions

* desktop application portability

* security

* partial docker alternative

* promoting adoption and access of applications written lesser popular languages

[crabmusket]

> In the past in nearly all prior discussions on this the greatest proponents for Web Assembly were developers who wanted to bring their technologies into the browser because they hate JavaScript.

I couldn't speak for "nearly all prior discussions", though I don't doubt there were many devs excited that they could bring their favourite language into a browser.

But if I remember correctly, WASM developed pretty directly out of asm.js, which was about bringing high performance code to the web. Yes, it was compiled from C, but not because people hated JS, but because writing the asm.js subset was awful, and writing C was a better way to target the low level high performance virtual machine.

Sure, there were plenty of existing libraries in C which were leveraged (e.g. the demo of Unreal running in the browser), but "I can compile a Python interpreter into a webpage" did not seem to me to be the reason for WASM, just a frivolous side-effect.

[useerup]

> Worse, it won't ever work if you intended it to be a JavaScript replacement because it cannot integrate into the interaction of the surrounding page, because it is a sandbox without compromise

That is a pretty bold statement considering that Blazor actually does allow you to ditch JavaScript and very much integrates with the surrounding page.

It is true that for manipulating the DOM, Blazor internally needs to go through JavaScript as there are no direct WASM-to-DOM binding (yet).

But you, as a developer, can develop sites that runs its interactivity using webassembly instead of Javascript.

[darby_eight]

Why would someone use this for desktop applications if you aren't obligated to target a web browser? The only benefit this brings is access to browser rendering, which is a pretty terrible desktop experience (see e.g. slack, spotify).

[sqeaky]

Portability?

In some situations it is harder to support different desktop builds and this might unify that.

I don't think it is the strongest argument but at least on the margins it is an option I can see teams in some places choosing.

[darby_eight]

I think this is the strongest argument, but the sticking point is still the interface actually integrating with the OS environment well. Otherwise Java/C# would have taken off as a de-facto portable solution decades ago (and, in fact, this seems to work pretty well for stuff like games where native integration isn't a factor—most of my favorite games these days run on some sort of managed code, and in fact modding would be much more difficult without this).

Granted, at least the browser code uses native widgets, but the look/feel and layout still tend to be way off.

[leptons]

Not sure why you claim it's a "terrible desktop experience"? What's wrong with it, please explain.

[darby_eight]

I already answered re: slack above, but spotify is just slow, ugly, and doesn't conform to native interface expectations. Granted, this is also largely true of iTunes, but the issue is much less flagrant there.

[leptons]

>ugly, and doesn't conform to native interface expectations

These are not strictly a result of targeting browsers for desktop applications, it's strictly down to design decisions that have nothing to do with how its implemented. I've seen plenty of wonky desktop/native applications that took way too many liberties with design whimsy that end up being a worse user experience than any webpage.

I also can't complain about Slack being slow because it doesn't seem slow to me and I'm part of a very large organization. I also use VS Code which is based on browser tech, and it's working really well. And I love that VS Code also works in the web applications I create. YMMV.

[darby_eight]

> These are not strictly a result of targeting browsers for desktop applications, it's strictly down to design decisions that have nothing to do with how its implemented.

It's not "strictly" down to this; even if you want to implement interfaces that fit in with native ones, web browsers simply don't expose many native features via the DOM/CSS. It's a question of actual capabilities, not of this hypothetical design process that doesn't care about native integration.

(Of course, there will always be terrible native interfaces. Arguably Apple is the worst offender here!)

[leptons]

>even if you want to implement interfaces that fit in with native ones, web browsers simply don't expose many native features via the DOM/CSS

In an application like VS Code, or anything built on Electron or other similar frameworks, the web browser actually can have access to anything and everything a desktop application has. Electron is a fusion of a Chromium web browser with Nodejs, so you can call Nodejs functions from the browser, and if you really need OS API access, you can also have C++ addons for Nodejs that can do the work and the browser interface can be used to call those functions.

The web browser is simply the user interface, it communicates with a nodejs back-end which can definitely also access OS level APIs if you really want it to.

So yes, the capabilities are there, you just didn't know about them because you think it's simply a web browser, when it's much more than that.

And I know for a fact that you're wrong, because I worked on a desktop application in 2006 that used Internet Explorer as the user interface (Windows was our target, for reasons), and it had a C++ "back end", which was used for burning DVDs (the first legal DVD burning application). The browser could call C++ functions that we chose to expose to the browser to do all sorts of OS-level things. There was nothing that the browser front-end couldn't access at the OS level if we chose to expose it to the front-end. So I know for a fact that you're wrong about your assumptions about desktop applications that use a web browser as the front end.

[kristiandupont]

Native interface expectations are only really a thing on MacOS at this point. I agree that they are often slower, but "ugly" is an opinion, one that I happen to disagree with. Native widgets feel primitive and dated to me.

[Gormo]

> Native widgets feel primitive and dated to me.

Have you tried using a different theme?

[kristiandupont]

I use MacOS so I don't think that's possible (unless you mean "dark mode"). But in any case, I am not talking about colors but general fidelity.

[darby_eight]

> Native widgets feel primitive and dated to me.

Compared to what? I honestly don't know what other people consider state of the art interfaces if native apps are excluded.

[kristiandupont]

Compared to the web. I consider apps like Linear to be ones spearheading UI paradigms at the moment.

[coldtea]

Sure, if one is easily satisfied and has low expectations, it's perfectly satisfying!

[falcor84]

Slack is terrible? In what sense?

[6510]

The client was specifically designed for browsing web pages. It has all kinds of features for it. A chat client would be quite different. The file menu would load and save chats. The context menu would have chatty things in it. You have to close the application to lose any application state. We've kinda forgot how nice it is to have a desktop application. 30-35 years ago function keys where cool. I cant remember the last time I've used one. I also cant remember the last time I've used the top menu with alt keys. The browser also has to limit functionality for safety reasons.

[eviks]

How do you rename files?

[darby_eight]

I mean, it's slow, it uses about ~500x more memory than my irc client does, the interface doesn't meld with the rest of the OS, the options for end-users to actually customize how the app works are direly limited... I'm probably missing gripes but thankfully I haven't had to use it for a couple of years.

[6510]

It's hard to list all the differences. Say, file association is quite useful.

[erhaetherth]

But you can do file association on the web https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web...

[coldtea]

Slow, memory hog, and incredibly bloated for what it does (not much different to what IM clients did 25 years ago on 1/100 the resources).

[durandal1]

You are not wrong, but it solves another really hard business problem: Hiring and retaining good engineers.

[DarkNova6]

But Blazor seems to do a fine job replacing JS with C#?

If you really want go to all-native JS because it has advantages, sure you can do. But what I see are bloated SPAs written in a language not designed for large software, based on an environment that likes to change and break things. It's abstractions upon abstractions get a hold of this mess.

I don't see why WASM couldn't compete.

[pjmlp]

Blazor is doing a fine job being a home for WebForms and Silverlight refugees, how far it will stay relevant remains to be seen.

On my job I have zero reasons to suggest it, given the split between FE and BE teams.

[DarkNova6]

Organisations always move slower than technologies. And if Microservies show anything it is that sometimes you just need a technical solution for a human problem.

I understand your lack of desire to touch anything remotely resembling frontend. Yet your hostility towards Blazor perplexes me, as for me it is the hot garbage that is JS is a primary reason.

[pjmlp]

Let's say I use Microsoft technologies since MS-DOS 3.3, and Blazor isn't the first great thing that eventually goes south.

I belong to the group of people that knows Web Forms before .NET 1.0, went through Silverlight, XNA, WinRT, UAP, UWP,...

One thing that Web Forms and Silverlight taught me, is that working directly with browser tech, regardless how bad it may be, is much better than debugging framework and VS interoperability code.

For the same reason I master C, regardless of my opinion on it, and its bad influences in security, I have a much easier time on UNIX clones, than otherwise would be.

[yen223]

Are there any good Blazor websites out there?

I'm not sure if I've ever encountered one in the wild, but to be fair I wasn't really looking.

[mardifoufs]

Blazor is peak corporate software. It's fine for internal apps but a nightmare for users that aren't forced to use something (ie, not internal apps). Blazor WASM in particular is the slowest web framework around, the layout is always broke and even on websites that are created to showcase blaze it absolutely is riddled with layout bugs the moment you use it on mobile.

React and other JS native frameworks, as much as they are looked down at from back end (especially dotnet devs) are miles ahead in terms of user experience and even actual development experience (good luck doing more than forms and basic stuff on blazor wasm for example).

It's for c#/dotnet devs that have a single hammer and hate learning new things so they will use csharp everywhere.

As to your point, can you show me a single user facing, non demo app or blazor related website that actually runs on blazor (especially wasm blazor) ? I'm curious to see why you think it's actually replacing or capable of replacing js on the front end.