Fwd: Web Workers

Oops, forgot reply all again.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jussi Kalliokoski <jussi.kalliokoski@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 12:18 PM
Subject: Re: Web Workers
To: robert@ocallahan.org


On Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 6:15 AM, Robert O'Callahan <robert@ocallahan.org>wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 12:29 AM, Jussi Kalliokoski <
> jussi.kalliokoski@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Is postMessaging your samples to a Worker for playback a problem for
>>> either of those cases?
>>>
>>
>> Prety much yeah, that would make the suboptimal case even more so. It
>> would be overtly difficult to get it reliable, even more so than with Audio
>> Data API.
>
>
> What do you mean by "reliable"? Doing work on the main thread is itself
> inherently not reliable.
>

Hence making the suboptimal case even more so.


>
> What are you proposing to do to work around the throttling that browsers
> impose on background tabs? Generally we want to be able to prevent
> background tabs from hogging the main thread. We would rather not add new
> features (like main-thread audio callbacks) that background tabs can use to
> accidentally or deliberately hog the main thread.
>

It's possible to hog the main thread from the background tabs without using
timers, too, using postMessage or worker communications, and that's even
more expensive, but sometimes you need have audio in background tabs as
well (music streaming services come first in mind). We can't tell in
forehand what it's going to be used for, so I don't see the point in making
it harder for the smart developer to do what he wants efficiently to make
it harder just so that the less smart one didn't accidentally (especially
when it's as unlikely as it is) make his application less efficient than he
can. I think being a nanny for developers is a bad idea. This is a case
where people are far more likely to know what they are doing than with
setTimeout/setInterval, throttling which I don't think was a good idea
either.


> Rob
> --
> “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your
> enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute
> you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. ... If you love
> those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax
> collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you
> doing more than others?" [Matthew 5:43-47]
>
>