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WASI 0.2.0 and Why It Matters

wasmcloud.com

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Re: WASI 0.2.0 and Why It Matters

#51

Post by pjmlp »

dartos wrote: post #29
pjmlp wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presenting as if it was the first done anyone has done any of this, UNCOL was the first time such ideas came to be, in 1958. Plenty of historical attempts to dive into, since 1958. Now we have startups redoing Java and .NET application servers, with Kubernetes, WebAssembly, WASI, and YAML spaghetti, because that is so much better. Edge devices running bytecode? That is so last century.

What’s old is new again. Edge devices running bytecode has its uses. Being an old idea doesn’t discredit it (neural networks were first described in the 70s) At least WASI is a standard unlike flash or Java applets.

De facto standard is still a standard.

Re: WASI 0.2.0 and Why It Matters

#52

Post by noworriesnate »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #47

I really want polyglot programming to become easier. What are the barriers remaining for wasm/wasi to provide a foundation for a truly polyglot FFI? It seems like it was the promise from the beginning, but I lost track a long time ago.

Extism is a polyglot plugin framework that has support for a lot of languages. It supports passing strings back and forth but that’s it for now IIUC. I’ve started incorporating it into a project of mine and really like it.

Re: WASI 0.2.0 and Why It Matters

#54

Post by pjmlp »

jraph wrote: post #28
pjmlp wrote: post #7

WASI aka redoing CLR Common Language Specification. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Language_Infrastructure https://ecma-international.org/publications-and-standards/st... > This Standard defines the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) in which applications written in multiple high-level languages can be executed in different system environments without the need to rewrite those applications to take into consid…

From your first link: > Microsoft and its partners hold patents for CLI. Ecma and ISO/IEC require that all patents essential to implementation be made available under "reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) terms." It is common for RAND licensing to require some royalty payment, which could be a cause for concern with Mono. As of January 2013, neither Microsoft nor its partners have identified any patents essential…

Doesn't change the fact it was done before, and it is only the most recent example, plenty of bytecode formats to explore since 1958.

Re: WASI 0.2.0 and Why It Matters

#56

Post by pjmlp »

flohofwoe wrote: post #32
pjmlp wrote: post #7

WASI aka redoing CLR Common Language Specification. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Language_Infrastructure https://ecma-international.org/publications-and-standards/st... > This Standard defines the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) in which applications written in multiple high-level languages can be executed in different system environments without the need to rewrite those applications to take into consid…

If the CLR wouldn't have focused on managed languages like C# but instead would have allowed to run C and C++ (unmodified, not the Franken-C++ Microsoft came up with multiple times which required substantial code modifications) more people would have taken it serious. Same with the JVM+Java+Oracle combo. But then Emscripten came along and showed how it's done properly, and everything derived from that (asm.js, WASM,…

I love how only Franken-GCC and Franken-clang have the right to be praised, among the universum of Franken-not-ISO-Extensions.

Last time I checked Emscripten was using Franken-clang.

Re: WASI 0.2.0 and Why It Matters

#57

Post by spankalee »

I'll be very happy when Preview 3 with async support is out.

GC + async makes WASM a suitable runtime for languages like JavaScript and Dart so that we don't have to have JS + WASM runtimes where the JS doesn't integrate with WASI well, or WASI runtimes that don't support JS that well (compiling SpiderMonkey to WASM isn't great).

Re: WASI 0.2.0 and Why It Matters

#58

Post by pjmlp »

Capricorn2481 wrote: post #35
pjmlp wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presenting as if it was the first done anyone has done any of this, UNCOL was the first time such ideas came to be, in 1958. Plenty of historical attempts to dive into, since 1958. Now we have startups redoing Java and .NET application servers, with Kubernetes, WebAssembly, WASI, and YAML spaghetti, because that is so much better. Edge devices running bytecode? That is so last century.

This just seems like an odd way to put people down, though. Some of us are not going to know the origin of most things that we use, but the reason for that is because those things weren't successful and web assembly is (relatively).

When people are present stuff as new they should have done their research, otherwise we will never get free from the computing fashion industry.

It is like microservices bandwagon nowadays, apparently distributed computing "Network is the Computer", computing agents, distributed objects, and service oriented architectures, also failed by the wayside.

Re: WASI 0.2.0 and Why It Matters

#59

Post by jauntywundrkind »

andoband wrote: post #43

Another good write-up which gives more context to this release, and it touches on POSIX in relation to the component model. https://blog.sunfishcode.online/wasi-preview2/

This does such a good job laying out the real fundamentals of what's happening. Capabilities model, component-model; it's well covered and nicely tied together.

The WasmCom keynote What is a component? (and why?) by Luke Wagner is also a great intro. https://youtu.be/tAACYA1Mwv4

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