I've noticed that the node.js Javascript package for bcrypt requires lots of non-Javascript libraries - C++, Python 2.7, etc.
Why is this necessary? Is there something special about encryption that requires non-Javascript languages?
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2Looks like the node.js package is nothing more than a thin wrapper over the python bcrypt library (which itself uses a CPython module, I would guess for performance reasons). As you can see in the answer to stackoverflow.com/questions/14573488/… there is also a pure JS package available, which I guess will be some orders of magnitude slower.l4mpi– l4mpi2017-02-16 11:40:43 +00:00Commented Feb 16, 2017 at 11:40
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1Primarily because of code reusability - why would people bother writing all crypto/hash libraries for all languages, not to mention the time it takes to test those, just so you can have it 'native' everywhere? If one writes a library in C/C++, you can compile and use it on pretty much any platform in pretty much any language, so that's why those 'popular' libraries tend to be written mostly in C/C++ and you just get a wrapper for your desired language to make it easier to interface. In case of bcrypt, it's essentially a Python-wrapped C module, hence the requirement.zwer– zwer2017-02-16 11:41:10 +00:00Commented Feb 16, 2017 at 11:41
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1 Answer
A algorithm like bcrypt never depends on a specific language. All general-purpose-langauges like C, Java, Pyton, JS, PHP etc.etc. can be sued to implement such algorithms.
Why they chose to use eg. C instead of just JS is likely because, at least with the currently available tools (compiler, interpreter etc.), C programs are much faster than JS. Encrypting large data sets shouldn't be unnecessary slow.
