71–80 of 83 posts
One thing I am concerned about is startup performance. On my (slow) Chromebook, some of my multi-megabyte WASM files take 10 seconds to compile. Seems we need either faster CPU cores, faster code generation, or some kind of staged JIT compile -- though I guess the latter could be accomplished today with sufficiently clever tooling.
Obligatory mention of this tongue in the cheek and visionary look presentation "The Birth & Death of JavaScript": https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death... This is basically what is happening with wasm and it's happening much faster Gary Bernhardt was anticipating in that presentation. IMHO wasm finally displaces javascript as the only practical language to run stuff in a browser. Frontend stuff…
This is the first time someone explained the value proposition of WebAssembly and I understood it. Now I'm actually intrigued.
> Eventually I’ll write a post about the wrong, but for now, the right: in some sense, WebAssembly is a different way of accomplishing what the JVM set out to do I agree, it's exciting, but this is half (or less than) an article. These hyped-up technologies make me grumpy neck beard.
As one of the co-founders of WASM, I can say, yes, the layering was a deliberate design decision for exactly the reasons laid out in the article. Glad this is penetrating the wider consciousness. Thanks for writing this, Steve!
At the risk of sounding like an old grumpy guy[0], isn't this kind of what Java[0] set out to achieve some 20 years ago? I am in no position to compare the two by any metric other than age. But I am old enough to appreciate how such ideas tend return every couple of decades. Is this an IT thing, or is this phenomenon known in other areas, too? [0] I am not even that old, and I do my best to not be grumpy. [1] Yes, ye…
Oberon had that too to some extent -- at a time when the Internet was still in its infancy. Oberon wasn't a commercially viable platform though.
At the risk of sounding like an old grumpy guy[0], isn't this kind of what Java[0] set out to achieve some 20 years ago? I am in no position to compare the two by any metric other than age. But I am old enough to appreciate how such ideas tend return every couple of decades. Is this an IT thing, or is this phenomenon known in other areas, too? [0] I am not even that old, and I do my best to not be grumpy. [1] Yes, ye…
No, Java wasn't the first. Bytecode formats for application executables delivery was and still is a common practice in the mainframe world. Xerox PARC workstation, UCSD Pascal systems, IBM and Unisys mainframes as examples.
It literally is a fancy turning machine bytecode that anyone can write an interpreter/transformer to actual cpu bytecode if needed.
As more languages support WASM, I bet we’ll see more of the front ends written in other languages.
WASM is to the web what JVMBC (java bytecode) is to apps. The open java spec flourished a big ecosystem like Adobe coldfusion/railo, jython for python, Nashhorn/rhino for JS, Jruby for Ruby, Jphp for php, cscjvm for C# and a host of others.
In my university, my compilers course assignment was to write a subset of C compiler that would output java bytecode. It really made me love compilers and programming languages.
I predict a bright future for WASM
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, Java wasn't the first. Bytecode formats for application executables delivery was and still is a common practice in the mainframe world. Xerox PARC workstation, UCSD Pascal systems, IBM and Unisys mainframes as examples.
Haha! WebAssembly is a really simple spec. I’d say optimized for speed and low level simplicity. You could put the entire byte code spec on a single piece of A4 and you wouldn’t have to squint. It literally is a fancy turning machine bytecode that anyone can write an interpreter/transformer to actual cpu bytecode if needed. As more languages support WASM, I bet we’ll see more of the front ends written in other langua…
The only big difference is that, like many other "modern" ideas, mainstream computers are catching up with mainframes.
At the risk of sounding like an old grumpy guy[0], isn't this kind of what Java[0] set out to achieve some 20 years ago? I am in no position to compare the two by any metric other than age. But I am old enough to appreciate how such ideas tend return every couple of decades. Is this an IT thing, or is this phenomenon known in other areas, too? [0] I am not even that old, and I do my best to not be grumpy. [1] Yes, ye…
Also the canvas, webgl, webrtc, audio and video IO APIs that can hook into it are much better than anything Java had to offer.
At the risk of sounding like an old grumpy guy[0], isn't this kind of what Java[0] set out to achieve some 20 years ago? I am in no position to compare the two by any metric other than age. But I am old enough to appreciate how such ideas tend return every couple of decades. Is this an IT thing, or is this phenomenon known in other areas, too? [0] I am not even that old, and I do my best to not be grumpy. [1] Yes, ye…
This phenomenon is certainly known in fashion and, looking at the boom of populist and nationalist politicians around the world, most probably in politics too. I would even risk saying it's imprinted in human nature.