Re: Ill-defined programs

> On Nov 13, 2017, at 3:44 PM, Jeff Gilbert <jgilbert@mozilla.com> wrote:
> 
> First off, those using these APIs (WebGL and WebGPU) are not writing
> geocities websites. They are engineers, and we should optimize for
> these engineers, not for the layman.

The worst interop problems come from extremely popular sites created by professional engineers, not geocities sites made by laymen.

> 
> In WebGL, we are aggressive about issuing descriptive errors and
> warnings on malformed or questionable API use. We've found this
> quickly surfaces portability issues, and makes them very quick to
> solve. I anticipate continuing this behavior during implementation of
> WebGPU. We have a ton of tools for giving feedback to devs who are
> doing the wrong thing, particularly if we have a less-perf-sensitive
> debug mode. (which can even be a JS library, not needing to be baked
> into the browser)
> 
> I think good validation is important for development, but its
> performance impact can hurt outside development, once a product is
> released. In our usage of APIs inside the browsers, outside of DEBUG
> builds, we try to turn off as much validation code as we can, given
> its performance impact. If we find it useful to do this, why would web
> apps not find it useful to do similar, and be able to run with a
> minimum (but not zero!) level of validation?

They'll definitely want to do this. It's just a bad idea to let them, because they will accidentally code sites that only work in one browser, or only on one OS, or only one CPU architecture, or only one GPU. Some of this may be inevitable but we should try our hardest to limit it.

> 
> In the six years I've been a part of WebGL, we have not seen the
> divergence in behaviors that you are afraid of, so I'm not sure why
> you think they will happen with this new API. Please appreciate our
> experience with this field, and the differences it has as compared to
> other areas.

According to Ken, it seems like WebGL has tried a lot harder to guarantee interop than the standard suggested here.

Even so, we have seen WebGL sites that only work in Chrome. So WebGL doesn't prove that interop isn't a concern for graphics.


> 
> On Mon, Nov 13, 2017 at 3:29 PM, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>> On Nov 13, 2017, at 3:21 PM, Jeff Gilbert <jgilbert@mozilla.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> On Mon, Nov 13, 2017 at 12:27 PM, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com> wrote:
>>>> On Nov 13, 2017, at 11:44 AM, Dzmitry Malyshau <dmalyshau@mozilla.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Yes. Strong objection. If behavior of any programs is not fully specified,
>>>> then web developers will start to accidentally depend on the behavior of one
>>>> browser (usually whichever is most popular), and then browsers will have to
>>>> reverse-engineer each others' behavior. This has happened so many times in
>>>> the course of web standards development that it's almost a running joke.
>>>> Every once in a while someone says "hey, let's just not define error
>>>> handling, we only need to define the behavior for valid content" it happens.
>>>> The first time was HTML, Browsers ended up reverse-engineering each other's
>>>> error handling until finally they got sick of the W3C not defining this and
>>>> formed the WHATWG to create HTML5, which fully specified parsing behavior
>>>> for all invalid documents. CSS, JavaScript and WebAssembly also have fully
>>>> interoperable behavior by spec, even in "invalid" or "error" or
>>>> "ill-defined" cases.
>>>> 
>>>> Let's not make this rookie mistake. We must fully define the behavior of all
>>>> programs.
>>> 
>>> We can fully define it without requiring exact behavior.
>> 
>> I'm not sure what that means. Are you suggesting a menu choice of one of N behaviors? Then the most popular behavior will become a de facto standard.
>> 
>>> It's not a rookie mistake to make compromises here.
>> 
>> It totally is. I can't think of a time we've done this on the web and it has been ok in the long run. I gave you a very notable failure example. Can you cite any past successes for the strategy of sacrificing interoperability on the web?
>> 
>>> There are a variety of ways
>>> in which our API here, like WebGL, differs greatly from the parsing
>>> deviations in early HTML. It is not white and black. Short of proved
>>> code, there will always be accidental portability problems, even if
>>> from nothing other than cargo-culting. We should make smart
>>> compromises here, using all the tools and avenues available to us,
>>> rather than have a knee-jerk requirement for maximum portability.
>>> (absolute portability is not even possible with our base graphics
>>> APIs)
>> 
>> It's my impression that, historically, graphics programmers have accepted a much lower bar for portability than the standard we strive for on the web. I believe we should shoot for something much closer to the web bar for portability. Accidental portability problems from cargo-culting are exactly the kind of problems I am worried about. The more we create the opportunity for such problems, the more likely that in 5-10 years we'll all have to reverse engineer Chrome for Windows and Safari for iOS behavior for desktop and mobile respectively.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> Maciej
>> 
>

Received on Tuesday, 14 November 2017 00:02:37 UTC