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Mozilla announces WebAssembly System Interface, what JVM should have been

theregister.co.uk

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Re: Mozilla announces WebAssembly System Interface, what JVM should have been

#121

Post by vraivroo »

quantummkv wrote: post #62
avian wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often wonder why this is the fact in software development and not nearly much so in other fields. Isn't the point of education that each generation doesn't have to learn past mistakes by repeating them? Do computer science curricula not include enough historical perspective? I feel like other fields of engineering don't have such a dismissive approach to their own pasts. Show an electrical engineering class an old…

> Do computer science curricula not include enough historical perspective? Anecdotally speaking, the average web developer does not have any formal computer science education. Most are self taught or attend a bootcamp or two at most. They have excellent vocational skills, but little knowledge of anything in computing outside of their narrow path of learning.

Oh man, this is so true. An acquaintance of mine who had recently graduated a bootcamp was crowing about how much he knows. I asked him for the big-O performance of adding an item to a linked list. He looked at me like I was speaking Martian.

Re: Mozilla announces WebAssembly System Interface, what JVM should have been

#122

Post by vraivroo »

cmiles74 wrote: post #106
otabdeveloper1 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java failed as a portable language-agnostic VM for user-facing apps. You know, the use-case it was originally designed for. (I read the hype for Java 1.0, I was there.) Nobody at the time could imagine that Java would eventually become the enterprise COBOL replacement.

I'm not so sure it failed. I use IntelliJ IDEA daily, people in my office use WebStorm for Javascript development. There are Swing applications out there that people use, admittedly the ones I've seen are mostly business software. And of course all Android applications are leveraging Java. It's argued that only IDEs use Java, but Java + Swing strikes me as the most popular cross-platform language and toolkit currentl…

that's only if you don't consider "web/browser" to be "cross-platform"

Re: Mozilla announces WebAssembly System Interface, what JVM should have been

#123

Post by asdkhadsj »

pjmlp wrote: post #117
asdkhadsj wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that what the goal of software should be? Solving problems with older implementations? Do people think WASM is not better than the JVM for streaming browser based usage? Did it learn nothing from the JVM? The sarcasm in these threads always confuses me.

Yes, because WASM is basically politics due to the refusal of other browser vendors to adopt PNaCL, and it doesn't provide any security for memory bound and null pointer exploits inside the sandbox.

So where were JVM targets for all my favorite languages, or any browser support for that matter?

I'm not going to debate any points against the JVM, but all I know is that I can compile languages I want to all browsers today. Why can't I do that for the JVM?

Something must be a massive, gory failure of the JVM and/or the companies involved with the JVM for it to be an equal to that of WASM, and yet have zero traction for modern languages and browser targets.

Re: Mozilla announces WebAssembly System Interface, what JVM should have been

#124

Post by olliej »

saagarjha wrote: post #33
olliej wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so much a problem of signed vs. unsigned code. There's the "are you malware that's got through whatever rules exist in the target App Store", but there's also the "is the extension code buggy". In my experience the latter is the real killer - there are all sorts of things an App Store review process can be used to prevent malware, but they're all dependent on the code doing what static analysis claims it's d…

I guess you're assuming that the platform/runtime that's doing the isolation is close to being correct, which we both know isn't quite true ;) The only benefit I see is that you're adding an additional level of abstraction (namely, you're executing a vetted selection of native code rather than arbitrary native code), which makes reaching the point where you can actually break things harder. Was this the point you wer…

The idea is to reduce the ability of the untrusted code to go wrong and compromise the host.

Going wrong can mean “exploited by malware” through to “extension code trawls the host process address space to provide ‘features’”

The latter of these two used to happen all the time with “haxies” on OS X.

The run on security benefit of providing a semi-virtualised environment for third party/untrusted code is that if the VM is exploited you are able to fix and ship a fix for the VM. You can’t fix the untrusted code.

Re: Mozilla announces WebAssembly System Interface, what JVM should have been

#125

Post by ksec »

analognoise wrote: post #94
ksec wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only difference is that WASM will be available ( I assume ) in most PC Chrome Browser within 2 - 3 years of releasing, that is 800M+ assuming Chrome with stable market shares. Along with Android, that is a potential of 2-3B devices, assuming stable upgrade cycle and shipment. That is more penetration than Java could ever get on Desktop and Mobile. Although Java is actually doing ok in embedded space, I am not ent…

Maybe my sarcasm detector is failing, but: Java is the most used programming language in the world ( https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ ) It not only powers all kinds of desktop things, it is foundational to Android, which currently powers ~85% of all mobile devices. How can you get more penetration than "most used programming language" and "foundational to the largest mobile OS"? I mean there isn't even a category t…

I should have use the word JVM rather than Java. My Apology.

Re: Mozilla announces WebAssembly System Interface, what JVM should have been

#126

Post by ksec »

pcwalton wrote: post #109
ksec wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I really don't get why the community is hell bent on reinventing the wheel, especially when the main defense of npm is that you don't have to reinvent the wheel. It's really disheartening to see that the best minds of the generation are busy spending time to reinvent the same old things instead of trying to improve upon the existing systems. I think it might have to do with people considering 40 as very old in Silic…

It may surprise you that the people behind Web Assembly are largely senior compiler developers who have certainly been around the block. Dan Gohman has forgotten more about compilers and VMs than 99% of the commenters here will ever know.

Sorry that was just replying to my parents on Web Development. I assume anyone who is doing compiler and VM development would be very senior and on a whole different level of expertise.

Re: Mozilla announces WebAssembly System Interface, what JVM should have been

#127

Post by usrusr »

pcwalton wrote: post #110
LameRubberDucky wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like the world of computer programming is caught in a very fast iteration of the old adage, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Which oddly, I was curious about that quote's origins, so I just went and looked it up. The full quote in context is: "Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direc…

You realize that the people behind Web Assembly, for example Dan Gohman, are some of the foremost world experts in compilers who have worked for literally decades in the field?

I don't think that GP was talking about the people who actually made web assembly, but about those who hype it. I'd be surprised if the former were not full of awareness of and respect towards the technologies that came before.

Re: Mozilla announces WebAssembly System Interface, what JVM should have been

#128

Post by TUSF »

phkahler wrote: post #72
neilv wrote: post #4

No slight against WASM (which I've promoted), but early Java people would be well-advised to sit down somewhere they can sob in privacy, before reading this article: > ...you can't run Java code in a browser without a plugin... > ...WASM, being memory safe and tuned for validation, also has security advantages over Java applets... > ...explained the difference between WebAssembly and Java thus: "WebAssembly has been…

From TFA: >> Mozilla this week announced a project called WASI (WebAssembly System Interface) to standardize how WebAssembly code interacts with operating systems. This is just another implementation of holes that allow web sites access to the rest of your system. It really is supposed to be the operating systems job to manage resources and what can be accessed. The problem is this functionality keeps getting re-impl…

What? No. WASI isn't meant to be implemented by the browser. It's meant for WASM runtimes outside of the browser, like Lucet and Wasmer.

People have been experimenting with "WASM outside the browser" for a while now, and WASI is just an API for making OS calls that a runtime can implement.

Re: Mozilla announces WebAssembly System Interface, what JVM should have been

#129

Post by pjmlp »

asdkhadsj wrote: post #123
pjmlp wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, because WASM is basically politics due to the refusal of other browser vendors to adopt PNaCL, and it doesn't provide any security for memory bound and null pointer exploits inside the sandbox.

So where were JVM targets for all my favorite languages, or any browser support for that matter? I'm not going to debate any points against the JVM, but all I know is that I can compile languages I want to all browsers today . Why can't I do that for the JVM? Something must be a massive, gory failure of the JVM and/or the companies involved with the JVM for it to be an equal to that of WASM, and yet have zero tractio…

Depends on the language I guess, I can compile Java, Kotlin, Scala, Clojure, TCL, Python, Ruby, Common Lisp and any other one able to produce LLVM bitcode on the JVM.

Also 86% of the mobile OS market runs on Java.

Additionally smartcards, a big portion of electricity meters, factory automation, smart copiers, M2M gateways, Bluray Players,... run on Java.

Alongside JavaScript and .NET, it rules software development across the corporations of the world.

Hardly a failure, only for naysayers.

Re: Mozilla announces WebAssembly System Interface, what JVM should have been

#130

Post by blacksmith_tb »

vorpalhex wrote: post #89
dmitriid wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Javascript/WASM is not controlled by any one large company or organization It’s disproportionally affected by Google.

Given that Mozilla has done tons of WASM work, and that one of the earliest implementors was Rust, comparing WASM to Oracle's iron fist over the JVM doesn't seem to jive with reality...

Jive != jibe[1] (but agreed about Moz's role in WASM)

1: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/jive-jibe-gibe

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