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Comment by ramesh31 | Hacker News Reader

>"Is it just me that finds it terrifying that theres any Windows bits on a spaceship?"

SpaceX Crew Dragon console interfaces are entirely React apps

Everything is terrifying in computing these days, and bringing it to space rockets makes it even more terrifying.

I think we need to mandate intentionally slower, sandboxed, and resource-constrained development environments/containers so developers are unable to abuse resources like they're "free" and in so using wasteful and improper algorithms to expand to fill the volume of the container (RAM, CPU, IOPS, storage capacity, and network bandwidth and latency) like an ideal gas. Lazy coding and excessive abstractions on top of VMs on top of more abstractions all the way down leads to shit.

So a web app then?

You're conflating dev and production erroneously. Not necessarily in dev but it could be a VM, process, or web app. The point being the production version should be performant and light on restrictions... and not necessarily web-centric either.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41655299

This comment makes it feel a lot safer, when you think about it.

"Web browsers are historically known for crashing, but that's partly because they have to handle every page on the whole Internet. A static system with the same browser running a single website, heavily tested, may be reliable enough for our needs."

When you've also built up the metal that you're running that React on, it's a lot warmer and cozier than having to trust the whole fat Windows 11 codebase on Artemis...

It's fine if you ignore supply chain attacks on npm packages.

Good! I've long said that Embedded UIs should be transitioning to being locally hosted webapps for a variety of reasons.

What would that variety of reasons be? Genuinely asking.

Main reason is easy availability of developers. Can't swing a dead cat without hitting a web developer, whereas try finding one that even knows what LVGL is.

Tons of existing libraries and frameworks. Essentially every UI problem you're likely to have is solved already, there are Known Good ways of dealing with most problems that you'll encounter.

Consistent interface: the primary interaction element is the browser and HTML is the simplest thing there is to generate. You can write a basic webserver in an afternoon.

And so on...

God, no. The last thing we need is to bring the bloated, slow, unpleasant to use nature of web apps to embedded devices.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com