Hacker News Reader

Comment by chadcmulligan | Hacker News Reader

I often feel I'm on another planet when I see timings for browser things people are recommending - Insert one message - best 9ms, insert 20 messages - best 33ms, worse - >8 Seconds! Why bother? just write a native client.

View on HN

When you insert 20 messages, there is way more happening than 20 db writes. Each insert will affect the UI which will cause a layout change. Also the changes will be replayed in different browser tabs and might also be replicated to the backend. Then there is things like conflict resolution, validation and encryption. You just cannot compare these speeds with your MySQL insert operation.

You see, the fact that you do all that for a write is what's wrong. The interface should be decoupled from the message write, and the GUI notified a change has happened and update if needed.

Yes, this is exactly what is happening. But still you only have one CPU in JavaScript, so the GUI part will take the resources from the database part.

So the browser isn't really suited to this sort of thing

The browser is an abstraction layer. It will always be slower. But all this does not matter because your user will not write 20 chat messages / second.

I hate to say slippery slope but - its bad, so why not make more bad stuff on top of it. I feel the bad parts of the browser are glossed over in software development decisions, this is a very bad approach for any engineering discipline. The surprising thing is how few software devs know how to do anything non browser, how can proper technology evaluations be performed without this? This is just the latest in a long line of such.

I just described the world how it is. I did not create it, I did not made the browser. I do not understand your point. You want to complain about what exactly?

I thought it was fairly clear - using the browser for an offline database is dumb. Even worse, by propagating this sort of nonsense it encourages new devs to think thats how things are done, when you can do the same thing with a native app, 10 or 100 times faster and take perhaps a tenth or even less the time taken to develop it.

Edit: and as I said at the beginning - "I often feel I'm on another planet" - having this discussion with web developers trying to justify something that is not just bad but dumb in so many ways always gives me a chuckle, and I try to educate on why there are other things beside browsers, and its not a very good way to write software

Browser-based apps have use cases even when you reject PWAs generally as a replacement for native apps. Trying out a new tool quickly, or short-term when using a tool with a customer, in enterprise where you can't install native tools, etc...

Well make a binary that doesn't require installation, this is a very narrow use case for a technology thats being advocated for more than that use case

Most enterprise users can’t download and run an arbitrary binary due to numerous security controls and regulations. This is true even if that binary is signed - if it isn’t on an allow-list maintained by high priests it can’t be used.

The real world demands web apps in the enterprise even in 2021.

This is a poor reason in 2021 - app stores exist. Software developers have an obligation, as professionals, to present the costs of web apps vs binaries when developing new projects, the browser is not an operating system and has real limitations - as this project demonstrates.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com