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WebAssembly becomes a W3C Recommendation

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41–50 of 248 posts

Re: WebAssembly becomes a W3C Recommendation

#42

Now if only we get a good web-oriented Python with a WASM backend, we'll finally be able to throw Javascript where it belongs: into the dustbin of history.

That's just replacing trash with rubbish.

What would you prefer then, Lua, with its 1-based arrays? Python is a mature, universal, versatile, insanely popular dynamic language with a nice syntax. It fits the bill perfectly.

Re: WebAssembly becomes a W3C Recommendation

#43
post #37

It's really uncanny how Gary Bernhardt predicted it all [0] a few years ago. [0] https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death...

Repeating what I wrote here [1], Fabrice Bellard wrote JSLinux in 2011, which is a CPU emulator written in JavaScript that runs the Linux kernel (using typed arrays and relying on fast JITs). That's just a way of saying that "the best way to predict the future is to invent it" (and do so before people who were "predicting" it). If you knew about asm.js and Google's (now abandoned) Nacl and PNacl, there's nothing surp…

> If you knew about [x], there's nothing surprising about [y]

You are technically correct, but at the same time I do think this way of framing it is selling Gary Bernhardt a little bit short. There is still an uncanny part in knowing all the right things at the right time to predict the future.

Re: WebAssembly becomes a W3C Recommendation

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a web dev and I don't know much about WASM. I've been wondering - will it be possible to render something to the screen without first going through the DOM? Or is the DOM literally the only way to display content? It's enticing to imagine being able to open a wasm file and seeing an application on the page. Kinda like how you can just open an image or a video in the browser, without rendering it via an html docum…

There is currently no path for any of that. No rendering without a DOM, and no opening WASM files by themselves. The same is true for JavaScript... if you open a JavaScript file, you just see the source code. Of course, why not just use a small HTML+JS shim for your WASM?

Because there is value in ditching legacy cruft.

Re: WebAssembly becomes a W3C Recommendation

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like w3c is just late with the announcement. From https://webassembly.org : --- quote --- Developer reference documentation for Wasm can be found on MDN's WebAssembly pages. The open standards for WebAssembly are developed in a W3C Community Group (that includes representatives from all major browsers) as well as a W3C Working Group. --- end quote ---

Off-topic, but I wish Markdown had a proper "multi line" block quote syntax like this. The current standard of ">" is open to too much interpretation around paragraph breaks. Similar to how fenced code blocks with ``` are a major improvement over prefixing the line with 4 spaces.

The difference between code blocks and block quotes is that you can nest the latter. On the one hand that makes multi-line syntax even more useful. On the other it would make reading block quotes hard to follow when reading MD in plain text (then again, who still does that these days?)

Re: WebAssembly becomes a W3C Recommendation

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like w3c is just late with the announcement. From https://webassembly.org : --- quote --- Developer reference documentation for Wasm can be found on MDN's WebAssembly pages. The open standards for WebAssembly are developed in a W3C Community Group (that includes representatives from all major browsers) as well as a W3C Working Group. --- end quote ---

Off-topic, but I wish Markdown had a proper "multi line" block quote syntax like this. The current standard of ">" is open to too much interpretation around paragraph breaks. Similar to how fenced code blocks with ``` are a major improvement over prefixing the line with 4 spaces.

In Markdown you can generally produce a single block quote with paragraph breaks by including quoted empty lines:

    > Paragraph 1
    >
    > Paragraph 2
Whereas you'd get two sequential quote blocks by using an unquoted empty line:

    > Quote 1
    
    > Quote 2

Re: WebAssembly becomes a W3C Recommendation

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As in, JS development for browser? You'll still need JS to run WebAssembly in the browser. It'll bury JS in the sense that you are able to develop in any other language like C++, and compile your program to JS+WebAssembly, so you don't need to develop in JS anymore. But JS itself (under the hood) is probably to stay for longer.

And then if all web apps move to a canvas-painted UI with all the code in web assembly then there will be a major accessibility problem. Unless screen readers can now dive down into the canvas layer?

"if all web apps move to a canvas-painted UI with all the code in web assembly then there will be a major accessibility problem"

As a web-development near illiterate, this equals to me as pages that aren't auditable before they're shown, which would pretty much translate into unblockable ads. Please someone tell me I am wrong.

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