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WebAssembly Troubles Part 1: WebAssembly Is Not a Stack Machine

troubles.md

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Re: WebAssembly Troubles Part 1: WebAssembly Is Not a Stack Machine

#21

Post by childintime »

titzer wrote: post #8

[one of the original Wasm designers here] Responding to the OP, since there is no comment section on the site. First off, this rant gets the history of Wasm wrong and the facts of Wasm wrong. I wouldn't unload on a random person on the internet generally, but I would like to point a sentence like: > Not only that, but for the most part the WebAssembly specification team were flying blind. It's an ad hominem. This rea…

> But this is a small thing and we didn't think about it at the time.

Inlining is likely important for performance. Any chance this will be corrected?

Re: WebAssembly Troubles Part 1: WebAssembly Is Not a Stack Machine

#22

Post by titzer »

childintime wrote: post #21
titzer wrote: post #8

[one of the original Wasm designers here] Responding to the OP, since there is no comment section on the site. First off, this rant gets the history of Wasm wrong and the facts of Wasm wrong. I wouldn't unload on a random person on the internet generally, but I would like to point a sentence like: > Not only that, but for the most part the WebAssembly specification team were flying blind. It's an ad hominem. This rea…

> But this is a small thing and we didn't think about it at the time. Inlining is likely important for performance. Any chance this will be corrected?

Inlining happens in optimizing compilers, on optimizing compiler IR, so it doesn't really make much difference here, IMO. Not sure how we could correct it in a backwards-compatible fashion.

Re: WebAssembly Troubles Part 1: WebAssembly Is Not a Stack Machine

#23

Post by dragonwriter »

titzer wrote: post #8

[one of the original Wasm designers here] Responding to the OP, since there is no comment section on the site. First off, this rant gets the history of Wasm wrong and the facts of Wasm wrong. I wouldn't unload on a random person on the internet generally, but I would like to point a sentence like: > Not only that, but for the most part the WebAssembly specification team were flying blind. It's an ad hominem. This rea…

> > Not only that, but for the most part the WebAssembly specification team were flying blind.

> It's an ad hominem.

Er, no, it's not. It's not a an attack on the designers as bad people, nor does it serve the role in an argument it would need to serve to be part of an ad hominem argument even if it was.

It may be inaccurate, misleading, , deceptive, uninformed, or a million other kinds of wrong, but it's not ad hominem.

Re: WebAssembly Troubles Part 1: WebAssembly Is Not a Stack Machine

#24

Post by [deleted] »

tomxor wrote: post #19
titzer wrote: post #8

[one of the original Wasm designers here] Responding to the OP, since there is no comment section on the site. First off, this rant gets the history of Wasm wrong and the facts of Wasm wrong. I wouldn't unload on a random person on the internet generally, but I would like to point a sentence like: > Not only that, but for the most part the WebAssembly specification team were flying blind. It's an ad hominem. This rea…

> It's an ad hominem. This really just impugns people and invites an argument. It might be cathartic, but generally it doesn't advance the conversation to cast aspersion like this. Ignoring any factual incorrectness, I can not see how the author could have made his point in a more respectful way. He clearly has great enthusiasm for WASM and respect for it's authors, I am struggling to see how anyone could have interp…

[deleted]

Re: WebAssembly Troubles Part 1: WebAssembly Is Not a Stack Machine

#25

Post by microcolonel »

childintime wrote: post #21
titzer wrote: post #8

[one of the original Wasm designers here] Responding to the OP, since there is no comment section on the site. First off, this rant gets the history of Wasm wrong and the facts of Wasm wrong. I wouldn't unload on a random person on the internet generally, but I would like to point a sentence like: > Not only that, but for the most part the WebAssembly specification team were flying blind. It's an ad hominem. This rea…

> But this is a small thing and we didn't think about it at the time. Inlining is likely important for performance. Any chance this will be corrected?

Inlining is pretty heavy, it's probably best done as an offline optimization rather than in the endpoint.

Re: WebAssembly Troubles Part 1: WebAssembly Is Not a Stack Machine

#26

Post by jdemler »

titzer wrote: post #8

[one of the original Wasm designers here] Responding to the OP, since there is no comment section on the site. First off, this rant gets the history of Wasm wrong and the facts of Wasm wrong. I wouldn't unload on a random person on the internet generally, but I would like to point a sentence like: > Not only that, but for the most part the WebAssembly specification team were flying blind. It's an ad hominem. This rea…

I would love to work on Wasm (compiler or tooling). Do you know a way to get such a job?

Re: WebAssembly Troubles Part 1: WebAssembly Is Not a Stack Machine

#27

Post by naasking »

titzer wrote: post #8

[one of the original Wasm designers here] Responding to the OP, since there is no comment section on the site. First off, this rant gets the history of Wasm wrong and the facts of Wasm wrong. I wouldn't unload on a random person on the internet generally, but I would like to point a sentence like: > Not only that, but for the most part the WebAssembly specification team were flying blind. It's an ad hominem. This rea…

> It feels different to be on the receiving of a comment like "flying blind"

The "flying blind" idiom just means that you were operating on intuitions developed from experience, but without much guidance from directly relevant factors (post mentions a working compiler with which you could run experiments to see what would and would not work).

I don't see how it could be interpreted as a dig in this context.

Re: WebAssembly Troubles Part 1: WebAssembly Is Not a Stack Machine

#28

Post by kbenson »

davidgrenier wrote: post #13
foldr wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Not only that, but for the most part the WebAssembly specification team were flying blind. >It's an ad hominem. I didn't read that as a criticism at all. He was just saying that the Wasm team didn't have all the information that they would ideally have wanted to have. No idea if that's true or not, but I think you're misreading it if you take it as some kind of ad hominem attack.

I agree that line should be read as "they were doing something novel" as opposed to "they were ignorant".

Flying blind is one of those odd expressions which is historically used to indicate something that is somewhat less negative than what someone would assume, if interpreting it without that context, making it easy to be interpreted differently by different parties.

It's generally used to indicate operating without information that's really required, but historically it's used when that information is missing because someone else should have provided it and didn't do so, leaving those doing the work without information they need. Without that context it sounds like someone is choosing to make a poor choice and work without knowledge they should have. The responsibility for the problem in those interpretations falls on different people, which can make the phrase tricky to use without ruffling some feathers, as it seems to have done here.

Re: WebAssembly Troubles Part 1: WebAssembly Is Not a Stack Machine

#29

Post by CDSlice »

titzer wrote: post #8

[one of the original Wasm designers here] Responding to the OP, since there is no comment section on the site. First off, this rant gets the history of Wasm wrong and the facts of Wasm wrong. I wouldn't unload on a random person on the internet generally, but I would like to point a sentence like: > Not only that, but for the most part the WebAssembly specification team were flying blind. It's an ad hominem. This rea…

This is slightly OT, but would you be able to give an estimate of when tail calls will be supported? https://github.com/WebAssembly/proposals says it is at Stage 3 but that doesn't really tell me how much longer it will take until I can use them.

Re: WebAssembly Troubles Part 1: WebAssembly Is Not a Stack Machine

#30

Post by foldr »

kbenson wrote: post #28
davidgrenier wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that line should be read as "they were doing something novel" as opposed to "they were ignorant".

Flying blind is one of those odd expressions which is historically used to indicate something that is somewhat less negative than what someone would assume, if interpreting it without that context, making it easy to be interpreted differently by different parties. It's generally used to indicate operating without information that's really required, but historically it's used when that information is missing because s…

It's perfectly clear what was meant if you read the surrounding context.
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