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WebAssembly becomes a W3C Recommendation

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Re: WebAssembly becomes a W3C Recommendation

#131

Post by jokoon »

Not to complain about WASM because it's great, but it certainly needs more compilers and toolchains, and it should be possible to make webgl calls directly.

Toolchains like clang and g++ should be able to generate WASM directly, I don't understand why you need so many things like bynaryen to make a WASM file. Having tools is essential if you want a technology to progress towards adoption.

EDIT: actually clang can now generate WASM. I'm not curious how feasible it would be to package python with WASM

Re: WebAssembly becomes a W3C Recommendation

#132

Post by cesarb »

calaphos wrote: post #33
tenaciousDaniel wrote: post #22

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…

You can take a Canvas element and draw anything you like on it - even hardware accelerated 3d using webGL. I think there are some projects trying to (re) implement a 2d user interface, rendered onto canvas. However the issue id that you will need to reimplement a lot of things the browser already does for you: rendering text, scaling, zoom, input methods, highlighting text, accessibility features, etc... Unless you u…

> > will it be possible to render something to the screen without first going through the DOM?

> You can take a Canvas element and draw anything you like on it

Don't you need to first go through the DOM to get the canvas element?

Re: WebAssembly becomes a W3C Recommendation

#133

Post by galaxyLogic »

duxup wrote: post #41

I wonder if people think work involving web assembly will coalesce around a few languages over time?

I think "native" web-tech like JavaScript & HTML will still have a lot of momentum in it. WASM is about other languages getting access to browser as a delivery platform. I wonder if language JavaScript that was originally designed to run on the web should have a competitive edge here?

The drawback of JavaScript has so far been its low execution speed, maybe WASM will make it run faster.

In other words maybe WASM will not be the downfall of JavaScript but its uplift.

Re: WebAssembly becomes a W3C Recommendation

#134

Post by janpot »

h8hawk wrote: post #104
janpot wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, in what sense is python a so much better choice for web development? syntax? subjective, and it would also mean all C-likes belong in the dustbin. performance? Why would python, as a language, be significantly more performant? It's just as dynamic. ecosystem? JS community is huge, JS package managers are huge (even though not flawless, but nothing their python counterparts do better) I mean I can sur…

I think almost any thing is better than js. At least it is popular due to its actual developer's. People use it because they like it and its ecosystem was grown by them, not force of a dumb decision in 90's or company backup. Both performance and ecosystem are not characteristics of language. they are due to being the only language is being supported in browser. (hint: I won't use python for web) Also comparing langu…

what characteristics should I use to compare languages with then, if I want to be clever?

Re: WebAssembly becomes a W3C Recommendation

#135

Post by dstaley »

kllrnohj wrote: post #79

Does anyone have any good success stories with WebAssembly in the actual context of using it on the web? That list of testimonials doesn't seem very inspiring as to whether or not the standard has seen actual production usage to justify being a recommended standard...

Ebay wrote up their experience shipping a WASM-powered barcode scanner. [1]

[1] https://tech.ebayinc.com/engineering/webassembly-at-ebay-a-r...

Re: WebAssembly becomes a W3C Recommendation

#136

Post by saagarjha »

chubot wrote: post #37
kemonocode wrote: post #30

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…

JSLinux was largely a toy, AFAIK. I don’t think it was meant as an exhortation to write all software that way.

Re: WebAssembly becomes a W3C Recommendation

#137

Post by ticmasta »

bobske4 wrote: post #126
kllrnohj wrote: post #79

Does anyone have any good success stories with WebAssembly in the actual context of using it on the web? That list of testimonials doesn't seem very inspiring as to whether or not the standard has seen actual production usage to justify being a recommended standard...

https://dotnet.microsoft.com/apps/aspnet/web-apps/blazor Using the whole .NET ecosystem from browser, yea I think there's some good success stories ;)

I think this speaks of huge potential, not actual success. I'm really, really hopeful that blazor becomes something real with long-term committment but not fully convinced yet it's not the new silverlight. I hope these fears are unfounded but hesitant to go all-in as a first mover. W3C support is a positive step.

Re: WebAssembly becomes a W3C Recommendation

#139

Post by cbhl »

dwohnitmok wrote: post #111
chubot wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think that's underselling the talk. Apart from the very enjoyable presentation, it makes valuable insights. The talk isn't trying to sell itself as 100% original. It makes reference to asm.js and a game demo that already existed at the time of the talk as well as repl.it. Despite that, I do think it makes a unique insight that even though JavaScript is ubiquitous, it will NOT be the language that future languages c…

> Moreover this bytecode has the potential to entirely supplant native code and can do so with equal or better performance.

I interpreted that part of the talk as hyperbole and sarcasm. It was saying that programmers will be so far removed from how computers work that they'll happily program against a model that has five layers of abstraction that simply serve to provide the original interface of the bottom layer.

Bytecode, by its nature, has to be translated into native code -- the way for it to be 'faster' than native code is to be native code. In software, you can do this with static or JIT compilation. The hardware people do this by changing their CPUs to make the things that people do in the bytecode faster. (Apple introduced new floating point CPU instructions in their iPhones just to make JavaScript faster.)

Re: WebAssembly becomes a W3C Recommendation

#140

Post by joeraut »

sehugg wrote: post #123
kllrnohj wrote: post #79

Does anyone have any good success stories with WebAssembly in the actual context of using it on the web? That list of testimonials doesn't seem very inspiring as to whether or not the standard has seen actual production usage to justify being a recommended standard...

I use it in a web worker to compile, assemble, and link C programs into 8-bit ROMs: https://8bitworkshop.com/ I was using asm.js in the past, but WASM gives a noticeable and necessary performance boost.

This looks awesome, great project!

Which specific CPUs or applications that you emulate really take advantage of the performance boost that WASM provides?

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