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Surma and Jake talk about whatever's going on in the world of tech & web development.

New View Transition Stuff 01/15/2025

New View Transition Stuff In this episode, Jake goes through some of the newer features of the View Transition API, along with some vaguer ideas that are planned for the future. Resources so you know when the UA has done its own transition to wait for a particular element to wait for a particular resource /episode/index/show/7f4e1dd2-207b-4e10-9995-ec44c3c76816/id/34864350

TC39 Roundup Drama Edition Part II: JS0 and JSSugar 12/16/2024

TC39 Roundup Drama Edition Part II: JS0 and JSSugar In this episode, Surma talks about a presenation-maybe-soon-to-be-a-proposal "JS0", which explores the idea of splitting JavaScript into two specifications: JS0, focusing on security, performance and capabilties, implemented by engines; and JSSugar, focussing on developer productivity and syntactic sugar features implemented by build tools. Notes & Corrections: Yes, I know, people still do have to step through assembler. But I stand behind the essence of my point: The debug symbols for compiled languages feel very reliable. We should be able to at least match that reliability in JavaScript. Guy Bedford currently works at Fastly. Resources: on source maps /episode/index/show/7f4e1dd2-207b-4e10-9995-ec44c3c76816/id/34466760

TC39 Roundup Drama Edition Part I: Shared Structs 12/03/2024

TC39 Roundup Drama Edition Part I: Shared Structs In this episode, Surma talks about the Stage 2 proposal "JavaScript Struct", which introduces fixed-layout objects and the ability to share them between realms. Notes & Corrections from : Surma was slightly wrong about why private fields were originally considered problematic for sharability. The problem occurs when a class can be evaluated multiple times: function makeClass() { return class MyClass { #priv; getPrivateField(instance) { return instance.#priv; } }; } const C1 = makeClass(); const C2 = makeClass(); const i1 = new C1(); const i2 = new C2(); // this throws! i1.getPrivateField(i2); This behavior makes it hard to compile private fields just as "slots" on an object, as clearly additional behavior is required. This is somewhat at odds with the goal of achieving a fixed layout. Also, launching is mid-2025 is very optimistic. Resources: Surma’s library for SharedArrayBuffer /episode/index/show/7f4e1dd2-207b-4e10-9995-ec44c3c76816/id/34262585

More build tools: Nix 10/29/2024

More build tools: Nix After talking about Bazel in one of our previous episodes, we are now looking at Nix, a build system that has been getting increasing attention lately. Resources: Surma's Eelco Dolstra's A of using Nix of size and freshness of different package managers /episode/index/show/7f4e1dd2-207b-4e10-9995-ec44c3c76816/id/33669457

The new stylable select element 10/08/2024

The new stylable select element We're finally getting a <select> element we can fully control with CSS! A bunch of other stuff needed to be added to the platform to make it work, and the good news is we can use it a lot of them independently of <select>. Resources: , and how you can provide feedback. . Nope, I still don't know what it does. . by Hidde de Vries and Scott O'Hara. . . (sorry, I said if-found in the episode). . . . . which give buttons declaritive activation behavior. /episode/index/show/7f4e1dd2-207b-4e10-9995-ec44c3c76816/id/33374637

Chrome's new LLM AI API OMG 08/30/2024

Chrome's new LLM AI API OMG Chrome is experimenting with exposing an LLM to the web platform. Jake and Surma dig into how the API works, and whether something like this could work on the open web. Resources: /episode/index/show/7f4e1dd2-207b-4e10-9995-ec44c3c76816/id/32807817

Chrome’s secretly installed extensions 08/06/2024

Chrome’s secretly installed extensions found a hidden Chrome extension that is installed by default in Chrome and most Chromium derivatives. Surma and Jake dig into what this extensions does and how reasonable it is to get angry about it. Resources: The extension’s The original that introduced the extension Brendan Eich’s Brave disabling the extension /episode/index/show/7f4e1dd2-207b-4e10-9995-ec44c3c76816/id/32455777

Are web components worth it? 06/12/2024

Are web components worth it? In this episode, Jake and Surma chat about web components. Why they were invented, what they're useful for, and how they would improve. Resources: . . . . . (formally lit-html). . . , for making custom elements interact with forms. . . . . . . . /episode/index/show/7f4e1dd2-207b-4e10-9995-ec44c3c76816/id/31716317

Why Source Maps don’t always work 06/03/2024

Why Source Maps don’t always work In this episode, Surma shares with Jake all the things he learned reading up on source maps and DWARF. Resources: by .kkrieger: and /episode/index/show/7f4e1dd2-207b-4e10-9995-ec44c3c76816/id/31577377

Putting React In The Browser 04/22/2024

Putting React In The Browser In this episode, Jake and Surma chat about the complexities of adding common framework patterns into the web platform, and work that has been done on that so far. Resources: . - Surma's investigation into wasm performance. . . . . . . . /episode/index/show/7f4e1dd2-207b-4e10-9995-ec44c3c76816/id/30931168

Canvas-based Web Apps 03/25/2024

Canvas-based Web Apps In this episode, Surma talks about web apps that (partly) abandon the DOM and use canvas instead, to take rendering matters into their own hands. Figma is one popular app that uses this approach, while Flutter is an entire app platform that went with this technique to provide portability. Jake and Surma discuss the tradeoffs of building apps this way. Resources: /episode/index/show/7f4e1dd2-207b-4e10-9995-ec44c3c76816/id/30517198

The Apple PWA Ban 03/01/2024

The Apple PWA Ban In this episode, Jake chats about the latest EU ruling that requires Apple to allow other browser engines on iOS, and how Apple is reacting to it. Resources: /episode/index/show/7f4e1dd2-207b-4e10-9995-ec44c3c76816/id/30185693

TC39 Roundup and Bevy’s ECS 01/24/2024

TC39 Roundup and Bevy’s ECS In this episode, Surma shares what he learned while getting started with the Bevy Game engine, Entity Component Systems and why they might be useful for the Web. Jake rounds up the newest JavaScript language features that landed in TC39’s Stage 3. Resources: , a library by Surma to store objects in ArrayBuffer Surma built with Bevy: , which covers JSON imports. . . /episode/index/show/7f4e1dd2-207b-4e10-9995-ec44c3c76816/id/29626598

The Big Build Bool Bonanaza II 12/27/2023

The Big Build Bool Bonanaza II In this episode, Jake investigates whether the existence of build tools is a symptom of the web being underpowered, or if they are part of the solution to make the web better. Surma shares his experience of learning about Bazel and how it can be used to build web projects. Resources: . . Yes, we have done before. Jake: Although "Terry's ringpull museum" isn't a real thing, the closest thing that comes to mind is a site I still use every time I buy a new pair of shoes, it's . Jake's 10 year old blog posts on . . . on writing custom Rollup plugins. . . . . . . video: . . . . /episode/index/show/7f4e1dd2-207b-4e10-9995-ec44c3c76816/id/29239318

WebGPU and Browser Ideologies 11/29/2023

WebGPU and Browser Ideologies In this episode, Surma talks about the “GPU” in “WebGPU” and how this new web standard makes programming for the GPU more accessible. Jake talks about how different browsers approach standards and their perceived ideologies around what they prioritize. Resources: Surma’s A on the architecture of GPUs. The explained , a C++ library that brings the WebGPU API to C++ , a Rust crate that brings the WebGPU API to Rust. . . . . /episode/index/show/7f4e1dd2-207b-4e10-9995-ec44c3c76816/id/28840118

From the Archive — Changing jobs, Deno, and optimizing animations 11/13/2023

From the Archive — Changing jobs, Deno, and optimizing animations (This is an episode from our previous podcast HTTP 203, originally published on June 29th, 2022) In this episode: - Surma changed jobs. - The Shopify interview process. - Pair programming vs pair problem solving. - Surma's also doing bits of work for Deno. - The complexities of testing image codecs. - Jake forgot to tell Ada how HTTP 203 filming ends, so it almost never did. - Keeping animations fast but simple for page transitions. Transcript: /episode/index/show/7f4e1dd2-207b-4e10-9995-ec44c3c76816/id/28613253

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