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Comment by pocketaces | Hacker News Reader

No you don't.

The Web as a distribution method has supported the downloading of native applications since forever. Instead of trying so hard to make it so that users don't need to install native applications, then I think that it would be much more optimal if development efforts instead went into making the native installation-process much more streamlined. For example, browsers could have some kind of functionality that makes it so that end-users do not need to choose the correct type of executable themselves (such as choosing between x86-windows7, x86-windows10, Linux, etc) and instead just click a single installation button.

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> No you don't.

How would we have made the 32-bit ARM-to-AArch64 transition if the Web were not portable? Remember that Apple cut 32-bit support very quickly, and no longer ships with it. For that matter, how could Apple have gotten away with shipping a usable browser at all on the ARM architecture in 2007, in the native world?

Remember that the x86 architecture is proprietary to Intel and is covered by a patent thicket. You'd be handing Intel a monopoly over the Web forever.

> For example, browsers could have some kind of functionality that makes it so that end-users do not need to choose the correct type of executable themselves (such as choosing between x86-windows7, x86-windows10, Linux, etc) and instead just click a single installation button

They've had this for decades [1].

[1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Us...

You use 32-bit ARM assembly on 32-bit ARM, AArch64 assembly on AArch64, and x86 assembly on x86. There is no handing over a monopoly to anyone.

While the mentioned browser functionality have existed for decades, then that does not change the fact that for the past decade then almost everytime I have had to download a native application I have had to select the correct type of executable myself. So the argument still stands. Developers should implement the mentioned functionality on a download page for their native application, instead of trying to make everything a web application.

I think that saying what someone should be doing is very short sighted, it's almost certain that they will not listen to you, especially since you're making their jobs harder and it's unsafe for the end user. Instead, let's focus on things that the developers actually want, like WASM, so we can have something decent out of it; dismissing it is definitely not going to help and WASM is already here to stay.

BTW how do you propose to safely run untrusted application with no built in support of parallelization in parallel, maybe even on multiple machines? How do you safely directly reference an object that is owned by another (again, untrusted) module, again, maybe even on a different machine (e.g. using RDMA through Infiniband)? These are just some of the possibilities that WASM is offering.

> While the mentioned browser functionality have existed for decades, then that does not change the fact that for the past decade then almost everytime I have had to download a native application I have had to select the correct type of executable myself.

Think about why that is. It's because Web site authors frequently don't "do the right thing", and they instead do what is most convenient. Following that line of reasoning, it is naive to think that Web site authors would have offered ARM executables at all back in 2007. That is the entire problem.

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