from Hacker News

No installation required: how WebAssembly is changing scientific computing

by kasperset on 3/12/24, 3:51 AM with 47 comments

  • by mike_hearn on 3/12/24, 9:13 AM

    > Some would use laptops, others would opt for tablets or mobile phones. Not all of them could even use the programming language that was the subject of the test: the statistical language R. “We had no control, really, over what devices those students were using,” says Stagg.

    Surely the problem here is much bigger than WebAssembly vs native code. What does it even mean to give students a test on using a software package if they aren't even willing to buy a computer? How are you supposed to do professional stats work after university on a mobile phone? They don't even expose a file system.

    Learning how to use a full workstation-class computer is a basic pre-requisite of doing science and many other types of professional work; these universities are just hopelessly lost if they're not making that clear to students up front and requiring or provisioning the equipment they need. Degrees awarded on the back of tests like these are worse than useless, they're outright deceptive to future employers. If someone claims they studied scientific computing and then turned out to not understand files, folders, packages, multiple windows and other basics then they'd be completely unable to do the job.

  • by firtoz on 3/12/24, 7:29 AM

    > For instance, modern operating systems can handle 64-bit numbers. WebAssembly, however, is limited to 32 bits, and can access only 232 bytes (4 gigabytes) of memory. Furthermore, it cannot directly access a computer’s file system or its open network connections. And it’s not multithreaded; many algorithms depend on this form of parallelization, which allows different parts of a computation to be performed simultaneously. “A lot of older code won’t compile into WebAssembly, because it assumes that it can do things that can’t be done,” Stagg says.

    I am surprised by the memory and 32 bit limitations... Are there plans to overcome them?

    Edit: found it, https://github.com/WebAssembly/memory64

  • by icedchai on 3/12/24, 10:59 PM

    We had code execution in the browser over 25+ years ago, with Java applets. Sure, they were bloated and sluggish back then. On today's hardware, you wouldn't even notice.

  • by Mortiffer on 3/12/24, 7:25 AM

    Don't see this happening scientists are totally happy installing R or Matlab etc. Often a lab even sticks with windows b/c of some drivers for a sensor that only exists for windows

  • by pjmlp on 3/12/24, 9:18 AM

    Yet another advocacy article with absent of what came before.