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The Road to the WASM Component Model 1.0

bytecodealliance.org

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Re: The Road to the WASM Component Model 1.0

#2
I'm unreasonably excited about WASI. WASI is the thing which takes WebAssembly from a tool for running stuff in a browser to a tool that can run entire portable sandboxed applications on a computer - with controlled filesystem and network access.

I don't ever want to run untrusted code from the internet outside of a sandbox ever again. If WASI lives up to its full potential I won't have to - we'll have a robust, cross-platform sandboxing solution for running real applications.

Re: The Road to the WASM Component Model 1.0

#5
WASM first appeared in 2017.

It still hasn't really reached a breakthrough.

Billions use HTML+CSS+JavaScript. Who really uses WASM? There are of course users, but very, very few in absolute numbers. Many projects are not web-based really. For Autodesk Fusion, as one example for many, I have some mega-slow application that takes forever to work with in some cases on my laptop (it is not the fastest laptop, but I recently tested this on a faster desktop computer with 32GB RAM and it is still slow to no ends; using it all WASM based would be even slower I bet. That's not winning anyone over ...).

Re: The Road to the WASM Component Model 1.0

#6

WASM first appeared in 2017. It still hasn't really reached a breakthrough. Billions use HTML+CSS+JavaScript. Who really uses WASM? There are of course users, but very, very few in absolute numbers. Many projects are not web-based really. For Autodesk Fusion, as one example for many, I have some mega-slow application that takes forever to work with in some cases on my laptop (it is not the fastest laptop, but I recen…

WASM made Figma.

Re: The Road to the WASM Component Model 1.0

#7

WASM first appeared in 2017. It still hasn't really reached a breakthrough. Billions use HTML+CSS+JavaScript. Who really uses WASM? There are of course users, but very, very few in absolute numbers. Many projects are not web-based really. For Autodesk Fusion, as one example for many, I have some mega-slow application that takes forever to work with in some cases on my laptop (it is not the fastest laptop, but I recen…

WASM is super useful for FFI in some env

Re: The Road to the WASM Component Model 1.0

#8

WASM first appeared in 2017. It still hasn't really reached a breakthrough. Billions use HTML+CSS+JavaScript. Who really uses WASM? There are of course users, but very, very few in absolute numbers. Many projects are not web-based really. For Autodesk Fusion, as one example for many, I have some mega-slow application that takes forever to work with in some cases on my laptop (it is not the fastest laptop, but I recen…

I wrote an Unreal file parser in C# and use it in our in-house web based DAM. It was much more ergonomic and performant than writing it in Javascript.

Re: The Road to the WASM Component Model 1.0

#10
post #3

Please please please bring it to the browser. I'm so done with the terrible ergonomics of everything at the was bounary having to pretend it's JavaScript

It works in the browser already: https://github.com/bytecodealliance/jco

It works in the browser already, by bundling another browser runtime engine into wasm. You need a whole fork of Mozilla's SpiderMonkey engine, compiled to wasm, running in whatever browser you have, to run wasm components today.

I confess I was quite frustrated at first when browsers all said no to wasi / wasm components. But honestly, it was the right call. It's taken so long to make wasm components happen, to get them far enough along to start really consider implementing. I can accept that as just the reality of what it takes for a small team to do such amazing work. I am so thankful for the folks who have kept this going, kept advancing.

But it's time now. 0.3 delivers an incredibly comprehensive & gorgeous suite of capabilities that offer a winning combination of characteristics (fast, lightweight, sandboxable, runtime composeable components) that is ideal for the web. I hope browsers can help get us set up for 1.0, help steer us forwards towards that spec, and I hope they're moving quickly towards being ready to implement!

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