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Saying goodbye to asm.js

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Re: Saying goodbye to asm.js

#41

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

pjmlp wrote: post #27

> asm.js was Mozilla’s response to the question posed by NaCl and PNaCl: how can the web run code at native speeds? Had it been today, Chrome would have just pushed NaCl and PNaCl no matter what, and then everyone would complain why Safari and Firefox aren't keeping up with "Web" standards.

I still maintain the notion we're in the wrong timeline, one where PNaCl died and instead of a worthy, timely successor we end up being boiled alive in a soup of Electron apps.

I really thought, for a time, that we'd be doing everything in the browser. And in a way that's increasingly true, but it all just feels worse than ever. I like WASM and I want to like WASM but the rate of maturity within the ecosystem is incredibly abysmal.

What's worse is that we should all be running our untrustworthy AI tools and their outputs in precisely such a sandbox, and companies are selling the reverse: hosted sandboxes, hosted JS-based VMs.

I guess that was always the problem: there was never any money in a client-side sandbox.

Re: Saying goodbye to asm.js

#42

Post by flohofwoe »

looneysquash wrote: post #19

I personally think this is a mistake. But I'm not sure how much it matters. It's not like a lot of people were using asm.js still AFAIK. But wasm is too isolated from javascript. From my limited use of it, I was considering trying to compile to asmjs instead. But I wasn't sure that emscripten still fully supported it. You can't call most web apis from wasm. But more important for what i was trying to do, you can't ze…

IIRC Emscripten has removed asm.js support around 2020, and that was probably the most important toolchain that ever supported asm.js (maybe followed by Rust, don't know if they still support it though)

> You can't call most web apis from wasm.

You can't from strict asm.js either, since it only supports numbers (no JS strings or objects) and manages the C heap in an ArrayBuffer object just like WASM.

> But more important for what i was trying to do, you can't zero copy buffers from js to wasm.

Same problem as above, you need to call out into "real" Javascript from asm.js and you can't map other ArrayBuffers directly into the 'asm.js heap' either, a copy is needed. The "Javascript FFI" really isn't much different between asm.js and WASM.

Re: Saying goodbye to asm.js

#44

Post by flohofwoe »

davidmurdoch wrote: post #39
eqrion wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But wasm is too isolated from javascript. From my limited use of it, I was considering trying to compile to asmjs instead asmjs is going to be strictly more limited in interacting with JS than wasm. You're basically limited to simple number values and array buffers. Whereas wasm now a days has GC types and can hold onto JS value using externref. > But more important for what i was trying to do, you can't zero copy…

This isn't a fair comparison. Wasm was severely limited when it was first implemented and it had the advantage of a decade of improvements. Asm.js has had zero improvements in that same time frame. Had WASM not been adopted we would have SIMD in JS ( probably via asm.js) by now. Because we didn't, JS just cannot compete with WASM in many computationally heavy workflows. We'd also have general purpose JS to Asm.js com…

> Asm.js has had zero improvements in that same time frame.

WASM is that evolution of (strict mode) asm.js. The two really aren't all that different from what they can and can't do.

Re: Saying goodbye to asm.js

#46

Post by phoe-krk »

futune wrote: post #15

So the death of asm.js is upon us? We are drifting away from the timeline of the prophecy: https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death... (And to those who haven't encountered this before, I strongly recommend a watch. It may be the greatest tech talk of all time, for certain values of greatest.)

Just substitute asm.js with WASM and you're still on the right track.

Re: Saying goodbye to asm.js

#48

Post by mikece »

bvisness wrote: post #25
futune wrote: post #15

So the death of asm.js is upon us? We are drifting away from the timeline of the prophecy: https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death... (And to those who haven't encountered this before, I strongly recommend a watch. It may be the greatest tech talk of all time, for certain values of greatest.)

Don't worry, YavaScript will live forever.

I still refer to it as YavaScript much to the confusion of junior devs. I just tell the new kids: "you had to be there..."

Re: Saying goodbye to asm.js

#49

Post by mikece »

futune wrote: post #15

So the death of asm.js is upon us? We are drifting away from the timeline of the prophecy: https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death... (And to those who haven't encountered this before, I strongly recommend a watch. It may be the greatest tech talk of all time, for certain values of greatest.)

I re-watch that presentation two or three times a year because it's a great example of how to give a presentation, how to structure your slide deck to complement your presentation, and a surprisingly educational tour of the permission rings architecture of operating systems.

And at some point we're going to have a period or war and our psychological attachments to old programming paradigms will be released so that we can move on to a more advanced way of doing things (but that won't stop your bank from running YavaScript for at least another 85 years).

Re: Saying goodbye to asm.js

#50

Post by tardedmeme »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #41
pjmlp wrote: post #27

> asm.js was Mozilla’s response to the question posed by NaCl and PNaCl: how can the web run code at native speeds? Had it been today, Chrome would have just pushed NaCl and PNaCl no matter what, and then everyone would complain why Safari and Firefox aren't keeping up with "Web" standards.

I still maintain the notion we're in the wrong timeline, one where PNaCl died and instead of a worthy, timely successor we end up being boiled alive in a soup of Electron apps. I really thought, for a time, that we'd be doing everything in the browser . And in a way that's increasingly true, but it all just feels worse than ever. I like WASM and I want to like WASM but the rate of maturity within the ecosystem is inc…

What are the key differences between PNaCl and WASM?
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