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What makes WebAssembly fast?

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Re: What makes WebAssembly fast?

#161

Post by bostik »

ncantelmo wrote: post #66
Svenskunganka wrote: post #34

> In the last article, I explained that programming with WebAssembly or JavaScript is not an either/or choice. We don’t expect that too many developers will be writing full WebAssembly code bases. I see this statement all the time, but it doesn't make sense. If you're looking at any programming language out there, they all have a growing members of their community asking and showing interest in targeting WebAssembly…

I agree completely, but I would take it a step further: If wasm doesn't overtake JS, something else that offers native bindings to other languages will eventually. There are huge benefits to be had for teams that want to be able to code their full stack in a language that isn't JS. We never asked for JavaScript (well the vast majority of us), but we've been stuck with it for the past two decades for all things web. N…

> If wasm doesn't overtake JS, something else that offers native bindings to other languages will eventually

When I read this I realised that WASM might just pave the way for something more fundamental: browser runtime stdlib.

One of the big issues, even highlighted in this very thread, is that people are wary of forcing 10MB+ blob downloads on their users. What would the effect be if browser provided a proper stdlib?

Re: What makes WebAssembly fast?

#162

Post by anticodon »

ZenPsycho wrote: post #156
themihai wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, 5G is not that far. Remember when SPA was considered too "fat"? Now most of the web apps are SPA with few MBs to download.

SPAs are still considered too fat. how do you miss the nearly daily "web bloat crisis" stories on HN?

You're probably access web sites sitting at home or office, where you have decent 10+ Mbps channel. All this changes when you travel and you use either slow public WiFi or phone tethering. Yes, there's 4G, but in most places in most countries 4G coverage is very poor: it's only in the most populated areas.

I travel between countries and of course I hate staying in huge cities because they're expensive and noisy. But when you move to smaller towns, there're usually limited options for connecting to the Internet.

Last year in India I spent 2.5 hours incessantly trying to open my bank website to make an urgent payment. All these huge React/Redux bundles were loading for ages, and they aren't cached and there's no support for resuming download after it dies because of some timeout or because you were looking at the spinner for 30 minutes and decided to click reload button.

And even when these huge SPA load, they're totally broken on slow connections. People become lazy and they don't handle timeouts and responses coming in weird order because of the slow channel. Even if you manage to open SPA on slow connection, it's a pain to use, almost impossible with all these XMLHttpRequests on every click transferring megabytes of data after every click or typing any letter. :(

Re: What makes WebAssembly fast?

#163

Post by scriptproof »

aphextron wrote: post #139

My excitement for WASM has nothing to do with speed or efficiency of the runtime. It's all about finally having a universal compile target for the web. We're finally going to be able to develop web apps in a proper language of our own choosing, without needing hacks like TypeScript. Hopefully, this will lead to real dedicated IDE tooling and standardized libraries for the web along the lines of what's available in iO…

You can write wasm. It is the official shortcut (not an acronym). Source: http://webassembly.org/

Re: What makes WebAssembly fast?

#164

Post by scriptproof »

bluejekyll wrote: post #106
wybiral wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is our one chance to kill javascript; if we don't do it now, it'll be entrenched forever, and best we'll ever get is 'compiles-to-js' languages like clojurescript and typescript. Do people really hate JavaScript that much? I've grown fond of it in recent years, especially after ES6.

Yes. People really hate JavaScript that much. ES6 brought some sanity to the language, but I continue to be firmly in the camp of continuing to hate and despise its existence.

These people are probably over represented here else things like Node.js, Electron would have never existed - and be successful.

Re: What makes WebAssembly fast?

#165

Post by vonklaus »

themihai wrote: post #144
aphextron wrote: post #139

My excitement for WASM has nothing to do with speed or efficiency of the runtime. It's all about finally having a universal compile target for the web. We're finally going to be able to develop web apps in a proper language of our own choosing, without needing hacks like TypeScript. Hopefully, this will lead to real dedicated IDE tooling and standardized libraries for the web along the lines of what's available in iO…

That's what I find great too, though for some reasons they put too much emphasis on JS-wasm compatibility and less on language support(i.e DOM or GC are considered "unicorn" features). I'm pretty sure 90% of the web developers won't mix js with wasm once they can compile their preferred language to wasm. You will find either js apps or wasm apps. There may be also a very small percent of js apps with wasm modules(i.e…

They are trying to convert current web devs. JS is the language of the browser and essentially the web, so most developers working in webdev primarily work w/ js.

Re: What makes WebAssembly fast?

#166

Post by cm2187 »

ZenPsycho wrote: post #140
ncantelmo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree completely, but I would take it a step further: If wasm doesn't overtake JS, something else that offers native bindings to other languages will eventually. There are huge benefits to be had for teams that want to be able to code their full stack in a language that isn't JS. We never asked for JavaScript (well the vast majority of us), but we've been stuck with it for the past two decades for all things web. N…

no, WASM will not replace JS unless somehow, overnight, the idea of downloading 30mb of compiled runtime libraries to read an inaccessible-to-screenreaders news article becomes appealing. but i wouldn't hold my breath for 1990's style java applet loading throbbers to come back into fashion. there's a reason that stuff got outcompeted by the supposedly "inferior" javascript. what wasm competes with is flash games, ins…

In all fairness, javascript should have never even been required to display a news article. Javascript makes up for a lot of the shortcomings of HTML.

Re: What makes WebAssembly fast?

#167

Post by hoschicz »

Javascript is an awfully designed language (it's getting better, but the basics are awful, no ints, crazy comparsions...) I hope that it will die soon and enable everybody to write web apps in a language of their choosing.

This may even end the craze around JS frontend tooling.

Re: What makes WebAssembly fast?

#168

Post by gjjrfcbugxbhf »

vonklaus wrote: post #165
themihai wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I find great too, though for some reasons they put too much emphasis on JS-wasm compatibility and less on language support(i.e DOM or GC are considered "unicorn" features). I'm pretty sure 90% of the web developers won't mix js with wasm once they can compile their preferred language to wasm. You will find either js apps or wasm apps. There may be also a very small percent of js apps with wasm modules(i.e…

They are trying to convert current web devs. JS is the language of the browser and essentially the web, so most developers working in webdev primarily work w/ js.

Actually many of us use es6 with a compiler to turn into some dialect of js that runs in browsers. We will hardly notice if our code starts getting compiled to wasm instead..

Re: What makes WebAssembly fast?

#169

Post by pjmlp »

ZenPsycho wrote: post #157
pjmlp wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It got outcompeted by Flash, JavaScript had zero to do with it. Had Apple not forbidden Flash on iOS, there would be no JavaScript superiority to talk about.

I invite you to try your favourite flash website in Puffin browser to see how "great" an experience flash on an iphone is.

Surely not worse than what JavaScript is.

Thankfully on Android and WP devices I was able to take the battery out, when the web site developer got too creative for the device's CPU/GPU.

Re: What makes WebAssembly fast?

#170

Post by jasonszhao »

rocky1138 wrote: post #90

On one hand, I'm excited about performance improvements. On the other, I lament the fact that this will kill one of the best parts of the web: the fact that the source is sent to the end user instead of a binary. It now makes the code and how it works opaque, thus killing the spirit of innovation and learning.

I agree with the others under this comment that websites already hide their source through obfuscation. What I am slightly more concerned is how this will go with the law. I think it is much harder to get into trouble when messing with obfuscated JS than when decompiling binary code.

Yes, you can get into trouble when you decompile code: http://security.stackexchange.com/a/30375/93013

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