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Making WebAssembly a first-class language on the Web

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Re: Making WebAssembly a first-class language on the Web

#101

Post by ilaksh »

I love WebAssembly components and that's great progress. But I feel like everyone is missing a golden opportunity here to take apart the giant OS-sized web API and break some of it out into smaller standard or subscribable subsets that also don't try to mix information presentation and applications in a forced way.

Example subsets:

- (mainly textual) information sharing

- media sharing

- application sharing with, small standard interface like WASI 2 or better yet including some graphics

- complex application sharing with networking

Smaller subsets of the giant web API would make for a better security situation and most importantly make it feasible for small groups to build out "browser" alternatives for information sharing, media or application sharing.

This is likely to not be pursued though because the extreme size of the web API (and CSS etc.) is one of the main things that protects browser monopolies.

Even further, create a standard webassembly registry and maybe allow people to easily combine components without necessarily implementing full subsets.

Do webassembly components track all of their dependencies? Will they assume some giant monolithic API like the DOM will be available?

What you're doing is essentially creating a distributed operating system definition (which is what the web essentially is). It can be designed in such a way that people can create clients for it without implementing massive APIs themselves.

Re: Making WebAssembly a first-class language on the Web

#102

Post by aaroninsf »

etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #98
armchairhacker wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another example of a top comment that was definitely written by an LLM. And to be clear, style isn't the only problem. This comment can be summarized as "WebAssembly can now interact with the DOM directly instead of through JavaScript, making it the better choice for more types of problems". One sentence instead of a paragraph of cliches ("...change how people think about this...chicken-and-egg loop..."), uncanny phr…

What do you think is the incentive to LLM post on HN (or any site?)

The incentive of the human who deployed it—at one remove or another—would require knowing more. But the more likely cases are easy to guess at, e.g., someone is playing with OpenClaw. I'd guess "someone is playing with OpenClaw and intends to write something about it boost their brand, could be a Show HN could be a LinkedIn screed they hope goes viral."

Could be for fun. I remember fun.

Re: Making WebAssembly a first-class language on the Web

#104

Post by cogman10 »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #73
traderj0e wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably needs to be fixed by bundling runtimes for things like Go, or bringing back cross-website caching in some secure way if that's possible

That's an orthogonal problem. First it needs to be possible and straightforward to write GCed languages in the sandbox. Second, GCed languages need to be willing to fit with the web/WASM GC model, which may not exactly match their own GC and which won't use their own GC. And after that, languages with runtimes could start trying to figure out how they might reduce the overhead of having a runtime.

> Second, GCed languages need to be willing to fit with the web/WASM GC model

I think most languages could pretty easily use WASM GC. The main issue comes around FFI. That's where things get nasty.

Re: Making WebAssembly a first-class language on the Web

#105

Post by dang »

hexo wrote: post #26

[flagged]

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Re: Making WebAssembly a first-class language on the Web

#106

Post by homebrewer »

etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #98
armchairhacker wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another example of a top comment that was definitely written by an LLM. And to be clear, style isn't the only problem. This comment can be summarized as "WebAssembly can now interact with the DOM directly instead of through JavaScript, making it the better choice for more types of problems". One sentence instead of a paragraph of cliches ("...change how people think about this...chicken-and-egg loop..."), uncanny phr…

What do you think is the incentive to LLM post on HN (or any site?)

The usual answer to this question is building out realistically looking accounts for later spam and/or astroturfing.

Re: Making WebAssembly a first-class language on the Web

#107

Post by Retr0id »

throwaway12pol wrote: post #100
Retr0id wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather deal with an obfuscated WASM blob than obfuscated JS.

Why is that? With obfuscated JS you can instantly create ASTs, easily patch and preview the results. We have codemodding tools for mass patching and analysis. With WASM, you can theoretically have a future anti-tamper corporation with a solution to actively obfuscate binaries and antagonize reverse engineers, like we have today with desktop binaries.

ASTs are pretty useless once it's been through a control-flow flattening obfuscation pass. At the end of the day it's just one representation vs another, but there are a lot more existing tools for dealing with binary reverse engineering.

Re: Making WebAssembly a first-class language on the Web

#108

Post by j45 »

eqrion wrote: post #17
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #11

The WASM cliff is very real. Every time I go to use it, because of the complexity of the tool chain and process of going from zero to anything at all, I feel like I'm already paying a cognitive tax. I worry that I should update my tooling, look into the latest and greatest, understand the tooling better, etc... It would be incredible to see that improved. The difference in perf without glue is crazy. But not surprisi…

I agree that a lot of the tooling is still early days. There has also been a lot of churn as the wasm component spec has changed. We personally have a goal that in most cases web developers won't need to write WIT and can just use Web API's as if they were a library. But it's early days.

The tooling has been in it's early days for a long time. As quickly as that can improve, so will the uptake. The technology itself is quite capable.

Re: Making WebAssembly a first-class language on the Web

#109

Post by tech234a »

joshuaissac wrote: post #94
exabrial wrote: post #60

I'd really like to be able to run _any_ language in the browser. WASM is a great first step.

Internet Explorer used to support any language that Windows Script Host could run. By default, that was JScript and VBScript, but there were third-party engines for Python, Perl, Ruby, Lua, and many others. Possibly disabled now as they announced VBScript would be disabled in 2019.

Also Visual Basic: https://news.microsoft.com/source/1996/10/28/microsoft-intro...

Re: Making WebAssembly a first-class language on the Web

#110

Post by joshuaissac »

tech234a wrote: post #109
joshuaissac wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internet Explorer used to support any language that Windows Script Host could run. By default, that was JScript and VBScript, but there were third-party engines for Python, Perl, Ruby, Lua, and many others. Possibly disabled now as they announced VBScript would be disabled in 2019.

Also Visual Basic: https://news.microsoft.com/source/1996/10/28/microsoft-intro...

That was something else entirely. Not for scripting but to write compiled ActiveX browser add-ons.
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