Comment by 72deluxe
2 hours ago
But then the C++ libraries you mentioned also had the ability to statically link into a binary, which means you could statically link the webcam access in, in your example. So I don't see the advantage you're arguing for?
It comes down to package distribution.
Chrome had already solved the hard problem of "how do we support webcams on linux, windows, and mac" and you as the dev just needed to use the Javascript webcam api. ( https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/MediaDevice... )
In C++ land, you are ultimately going to either need to cook up your own webcam library or look for a 3rd party (which, in 2010, likely didn't exist) to provide it.
Today, there are a few easy to discover rust crates which provide cross platform webcam apis. But further, rust does cross platform better than C/C++ IMO. It's really easy to change how code is compiled based on the target. That was all well thought out because rust was supposed to be a language for browsers.