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What makes WebAssembly fast?

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Re: What makes WebAssembly fast?

#141

Post by noam87 »

mstade wrote: post #24
dmarcos wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WebAssembly won't give you unlimited power. You will still have the browser sandboxing and security / privacy policies in place. Accessing to the local file system is for instance constrained in the browser for good reasons. WebAssembly apps will be able to do what Web APIs let any page do.

Is this universally true – i.e. baked in to the wasm spec – or is it just true in a browser environment? Consider things like NW.js[1] or Electron[2] – might we see cross platform apps being developed where all or parts of it are written in and compiled to wasm, then packaged up with a runtime and delivered as a "native" application for desktop, mobile, or whatever? [1]: https://nwjs.io [2]: https://electron.atom.io

What would be the benefit of that? Might as well just compile to native and distribute that without all the overhead, no?

Re: What makes WebAssembly fast?

#142

Post by pjmlp »

ZenPsycho wrote: post #140
ncantelmo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree completely, but I would take it a step further: If wasm doesn't overtake JS, something else that offers native bindings to other languages will eventually. There are huge benefits to be had for teams that want to be able to code their full stack in a language that isn't JS. We never asked for JavaScript (well the vast majority of us), but we've been stuck with it for the past two decades for all things web. N…

no, WASM will not replace JS unless somehow, overnight, the idea of downloading 30mb of compiled runtime libraries to read an inaccessible-to-screenreaders news article becomes appealing. but i wouldn't hold my breath for 1990's style java applet loading throbbers to come back into fashion. there's a reason that stuff got outcompeted by the supposedly "inferior" javascript. what wasm competes with is flash games, ins…

It got outcompeted by Flash, JavaScript had zero to do with it.

Had Apple not forbidden Flash on iOS, there would be no JavaScript superiority to talk about.

Re: What makes WebAssembly fast?

#143

Post by ZenPsycho »

petre wrote: post #135
wybiral wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is our one chance to kill javascript; if we don't do it now, it'll be entrenched forever, and best we'll ever get is 'compiles-to-js' languages like clojurescript and typescript. Do people really hate JavaScript that much? I've grown fond of it in recent years, especially after ES6.

I don't hate JS but would rather write my web codebase in something else, something that has a standard lib for instance. ES6 is also a transpile to JS language on the browser. The main problem is that we are stuck with ancient JS on the browser and WASM could fix that. Wouldn't you rather conpile ES6 to WASM instead of JS?

browsers that support WASM will support ES6 natively. compiling ES6 to WASM would not be a good idea, since you would have to send a garbage collector and full dynamic language runtime down the pipe instead of just using the one in the browser.

wouldn't you rather just run ES6 right in the browser instead of compiling it first at all?

Re: What makes WebAssembly fast?

#144

Post by themihai »

aphextron wrote: post #139

My excitement for WASM has nothing to do with speed or efficiency of the runtime. It's all about finally having a universal compile target for the web. We're finally going to be able to develop web apps in a proper language of our own choosing, without needing hacks like TypeScript. Hopefully, this will lead to real dedicated IDE tooling and standardized libraries for the web along the lines of what's available in iO…

That's what I find great too, though for some reasons they put too much emphasis on JS-wasm compatibility and less on language support(i.e DOM or GC are considered "unicorn" features). I'm pretty sure 90% of the web developers won't mix js with wasm once they can compile their preferred language to wasm. You will find either js apps or wasm apps. There may be also a very small percent of js apps with wasm modules(i.e for video decoding)

Re: What makes WebAssembly fast?

#145

Post by pjmlp »

wybiral wrote: post #74
shadowmint wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> something else that offers native bindings to other languages will eventually... No it won't. This is our one chance to kill javascript; if we don't do it now, it'll be entrenched forever, and best we'll ever get is 'compiles-to-js' languages like clojurescript and typescript. Let's be realistic; who has the man power, community good will and business savvy to push an entirely new language across all platforms, mob…

> This is our one chance to kill javascript; if we don't do it now, it'll be entrenched forever, and best we'll ever get is 'compiles-to-js' languages like clojurescript and typescript. Do people really hate JavaScript that much? I've grown fond of it in recent years, especially after ES6.

Not everyone can use ES6 or transpilers.

For example, on the type of projects I work on, all tooling is certified by customers IT and anything extra requires change request, that might get approved, or not.

Re: What makes WebAssembly fast?

#146

Post by [deleted] »

aphextron wrote: post #139

My excitement for WASM has nothing to do with speed or efficiency of the runtime. It's all about finally having a universal compile target for the web. We're finally going to be able to develop web apps in a proper language of our own choosing, without needing hacks like TypeScript. Hopefully, this will lead to real dedicated IDE tooling and standardized libraries for the web along the lines of what's available in iO…

[deleted]

Re: What makes WebAssembly fast?

#147

Post by themihai »

ZenPsycho wrote: post #140
ncantelmo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree completely, but I would take it a step further: If wasm doesn't overtake JS, something else that offers native bindings to other languages will eventually. There are huge benefits to be had for teams that want to be able to code their full stack in a language that isn't JS. We never asked for JavaScript (well the vast majority of us), but we've been stuck with it for the past two decades for all things web. N…

no, WASM will not replace JS unless somehow, overnight, the idea of downloading 30mb of compiled runtime libraries to read an inaccessible-to-screenreaders news article becomes appealing. but i wouldn't hold my breath for 1990's style java applet loading throbbers to come back into fashion. there's a reason that stuff got outcompeted by the supposedly "inferior" javascript. what wasm competes with is flash games, ins…

Well, 5G is not that far. Remember when SPA was considered too "fat"? Now most of the web apps are SPA with few MBs to download.

Re: What makes WebAssembly fast?

#148

Post by irrational »

bluejekyll wrote: post #106
wybiral wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is our one chance to kill javascript; if we don't do it now, it'll be entrenched forever, and best we'll ever get is 'compiles-to-js' languages like clojurescript and typescript. Do people really hate JavaScript that much? I've grown fond of it in recent years, especially after ES6.

Yes. People really hate JavaScript that much. ES6 brought some sanity to the language, but I continue to be firmly in the camp of continuing to hate and despise its existence.

This could be said for any language.

Yes. People really hate C that much. C++ brought some sanity to the language, but I continue to be firmly in the camp of continuing to hate and despise its existence.

Re: What makes WebAssembly fast?

#149

Post by themihai »

wybiral wrote: post #74
shadowmint wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> something else that offers native bindings to other languages will eventually... No it won't. This is our one chance to kill javascript; if we don't do it now, it'll be entrenched forever, and best we'll ever get is 'compiles-to-js' languages like clojurescript and typescript. Let's be realistic; who has the man power, community good will and business savvy to push an entirely new language across all platforms, mob…

> This is our one chance to kill javascript; if we don't do it now, it'll be entrenched forever, and best we'll ever get is 'compiles-to-js' languages like clojurescript and typescript. Do people really hate JavaScript that much? I've grown fond of it in recent years, especially after ES6.

The lack of choice has to be hated. Some hate JS just for that.

Re: What makes WebAssembly fast?

#150

Post by willtim »

zeveb wrote: post #23
batmansmk wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java and Javascript are related like Car and Carpet are similar. There was no historical connection between Java and JavaScript beyond renting the brand "Java" from Sun to make the language more credible.

Well, it's possible that if it hadn't been for Java JavaScript might have had a decent, parens-based syntax. I still wonder what might have been if Eich had been allowed to write the Scheme system he had been hired to do. While I'm not a fan of Scheme by any means, it is approximately 281,757,423,024,353 better than JavaScript. And Scheme's a great little language for implementing other languages. Imagine, we could h…

They could have used "Scheme" with angled brackets instead of parens, which would have made it look much more like an extension of HTML.
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