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Comment by jstroem | Hacker News Reader

Hi HN

Here to show a little library that makes it easier to write custom JavaScript code that flashes ESP32s.

The library uses the new WebSerial API available in Edge and Chrome browsers.

Not to belittle your project, I'm all for hackers hacking on interesting projects, but I really am confused why such an API exists within the browser. The MDN page talks about browser connected 3D printers and boards like the ESP32, but boggles my mind that time and energy was expended to enable this.

Knowing that Chromebooks exists should give you the rough answer why does this exists.

Do Chromebooks only run a browser? I never really looked into them.

No longer (it now also runs Android* and certain Linux applications), but at the time Google proposed Web(MIDI/USB/Bluetooth) ChromeOS was only a browser-based operating system.

* Works on their x86 models, but depending on the specific application it's slower due to translation. Android apps runs best on ARM models.

One of the big benefits of web apps, is that they are truly portable. I can run my app on any machine with a relatively up-to-date web browser. Like it or not, this is leading to more and more serious work being done in the browser. Aren't APIs like this almost inevitable?

I really, honestly hope that this by some miracle will not happen. The "modern web" is the most bloated, slow and inefficient mess imaginable. Not knocking the browsers themselves, those are marvels of engineering, but yeah.

I will give you three reasons why it will happen:

- ChromeOS

- Project Fugu

- Microsoft collaboration regarding Chrome and PWA adoption

The value proposition of this is pretty great, actually, and the implementation of it can be rather simple even though the actual interfaces underneath are rather fucked up historically because at it's core it's merely just getting a stream of bytes in/out.

Chrome is no longer “a browser”, it’s more like the new JVM - the “write once, run anywhere” platform for desktop app deployment

> available in Edge and Chrome browsers

Edge having better support for new features than firefox.. Truly a brave new world

The same was true of Active-X with IE at one point.

and its chromium

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