Chrome Is the New C Runtime 196
New submitter uncloud writes "Cross-platform app development is more important than ever. But what about when you need the features and performance of native code, across platforms? And you're a startup with a small team and impossible deadlines?" His answer? Take advantage of cross-platform Chrome. From the article: "Out of necessity, the Chrome team has created cross-platform abstractions for many low-level platform features. We use this source as the core API on which we build our business logic, and it's made the bulk of our app cross-platform with little effort. Most importantly -- Chrome code has been battle-tested like almost nothing else, with an installed base in the hundreds of millions. That makes all the difference when you want to spend your days working on your company's business logic instead of debugging platform issues."
Re:Bloat. (Score:4, Informative)
Not only are you assuming that a web-browser is already loaded, you are also assuming that that exact web-browser is loaded.
How about no? (Score:4, Informative)
Pretty much all the features they need are standard features or are better addressed by a dedicated library.
Also it's more a framework than a runtime. Learn the difference, it could save your life.
Re:Mozilla NSPR (Score:4, Informative)
And Apache has the Apache Portable Runtime, with similar goals, but probably geared more towards writing server code.
Re:Plugins. (Score:5, Informative)
WTF? You didn't read the article did you.
nothing about plugins - its about leveraging the libraries than Chromium uses to build Chrome. In that, you can leverage those same libraries to build whatever you like. Its got fuck all to do with plugins, or Chrome itself for that matter.
Re:Bloat. (Score:5, Informative)
They had alternatives. For native C++ development, they could have used Chrome's platform abstraction, Mozilla's, Apache's, or Qt. I'd say that going with Chrome may be a bit against the grain, but hey, if it works for them, it works for them. I wonder how well the damn thing is documented, because it's hard to beat Qt's documentation.
Re:Aside from the obvious security issue... (Score:4, Informative)
Seems more like an understanding fail to me. Their business is not built on Google. It's built on a platform abstraction library that currently works for their intended uses. It's a closed book, they don't need any further involvement from Google. If they want to, they can fork it and maintain it themselves. They've already got a big trampoline so it'd still be less work to maintain that code than to come you with a yet another in-house, buggy, under-tested "framework".
Re:Java as the cure for "bloat"? What the fuck, so (Score:5, Informative)