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Standardizing WASI: A system interface to run WebAssembly outside the web

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Re: Standardizing WASI: A system interface to run WebAssembly outside the web

#151

Post by vbuwivbiu »

otabdeveloper2 wrote: post #118
gwbas1c wrote: post #91

Wait a second... I thought Java was supposed to do this with the JVM... I thought .Net was supposed to do this with the CLR... What's different now?

The JVM and CLR suck balls. They put in huge amounts of effort into things that don't need solving, and the things that need to be solved they do in the most roundabout way possible. What we _really_ need is a sandboxed VM for running C code securely and efficiently. The JVM is pretty much the opposite of that; it's not sandboxed, not secure and certainly not efficient as a target for C code. We're hoping WASM starts…

"it's not sandboxed" well, it is, and it's secure and it can run bytecode as fast as C

Re: Standardizing WASI: A system interface to run WebAssembly outside the web

#152

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

otabdeveloper2 wrote: post #118
gwbas1c wrote: post #91

Wait a second... I thought Java was supposed to do this with the JVM... I thought .Net was supposed to do this with the CLR... What's different now?

The JVM and CLR suck balls. They put in huge amounts of effort into things that don't need solving, and the things that need to be solved they do in the most roundabout way possible. What we _really_ need is a sandboxed VM for running C code securely and efficiently. The JVM is pretty much the opposite of that; it's not sandboxed, not secure and certainly not efficient as a target for C code. We're hoping WASM starts…

This time, things will be different!

I mean, maybe they really will be, but history suggests otherwise.

Re: Standardizing WASI: A system interface to run WebAssembly outside the web

#153

Post by mhh__ »

emerongi wrote: post #110
mhh__ wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it matter? I don't really see the issue with competing standards if the standards are open: The "best" (for some definition of best) should win out eventually. Anything other than Electron if it comes to it

We could re-implement C as well, but is it sensible if we already have C? If someone could explain the difference between WASI and JVM the way you can explain the difference between C, C++ or Rust, it would help a lot. If there is no such explanation, I think we should really question what is being accomplished here. As it stands currently, WebAssembly seems to integrate nicely with browsers, whereas JVM works nicely…

Yes. C is an absolutely terrible programming language that we use because it got their first. I sincerely hope that C (and bad C++, so probably C++ as well) is phased out over the coming years purely because it's too dangerous to use it in critical software (One life lost to memory corruption is too many). This probably won't happen, but I hope it does.

JVM is pretty complicated and not open source(? I'm not entirely sure who owns the standard, if there is one). WebAssembly has the advantage of hindsight and being able to be designed to completion rather than evolved

Re: Standardizing WASI: A system interface to run WebAssembly outside the web

#154

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

emerongi wrote: post #115
emerongi wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could re-implement C as well, but is it sensible if we already have C? If someone could explain the difference between WASI and JVM the way you can explain the difference between C, C++ or Rust, it would help a lot. If there is no such explanation, I think we should really question what is being accomplished here. As it stands currently, WebAssembly seems to integrate nicely with browsers, whereas JVM works nicely…

I've now found a blog post[0], which seems to outline two main reasons for WASM over JVM on the web: 1. WASM is an open standard 2. WASM spec is smaller, so it's easier to integrate into the Javascript VM, which itself brings many benefits Since WASM wins on the web, I guess it makes sense for developers to want to develop one version of their code for both the web as well as native environments. Thus, WASM -> Native…

> 1. WASM is an open standard

So is the web, but that didn't stop anyone from extending it in incompatible ways and all implementations being subtly different enough that you still have care about which one you're running on and, oh yeah, it's also becoming dominated by a single player who steers the whole thing pretty much wherever they want it.

Re: Standardizing WASI: A system interface to run WebAssembly outside the web

#155

Post by McWobbleston »

emerongi wrote: post #110
mhh__ wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it matter? I don't really see the issue with competing standards if the standards are open: The "best" (for some definition of best) should win out eventually. Anything other than Electron if it comes to it

We could re-implement C as well, but is it sensible if we already have C? If someone could explain the difference between WASI and JVM the way you can explain the difference between C, C++ or Rust, it would help a lot. If there is no such explanation, I think we should really question what is being accomplished here. As it stands currently, WebAssembly seems to integrate nicely with browsers, whereas JVM works nicely…

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but don't the JVM and CLR assume they're working with GC'd languages and a number of other things? Making them poor targets for many languages, and AFAIK a WASM runtime is a lot more lightweight than both of them

The JVM and CLR seem like they're language platforms first and VMs second

Re: Standardizing WASI: A system interface to run WebAssembly outside the web

#156

Post by hutzlibu »

naikrovek wrote: post #96
ryanschneider wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> OK you answered a few of my questions and I still don't see why WASM is a requirement for any of this to happen. It's _not_ a requirement, but at least to me it seems like a pretty good _possible_ solution. I sense you're pretty jaded about web development, and I get that, but I don't agree this is "web people" trying to do things outside the browser, but rather I see it more as "systems people" trying to bring _so…

I don't think that web technologies are going to be a good solution to anything that is not the web. The web development community haven't even solved their own problem space very well; spreading to new problem spaces will likely not suit them as much as they believe it will.

You should consider, that you just have a bias against "web people".

But this technologie comes not from javascript webprogrammers, but from browsermakers.

People who specialize in sandboxing, performance and portability since years. And they had to do this with javascript... and now they want a better foundation, BECAUSE of the flaws of javascript.

So I don't know if they will succeed making a better jvm either, but they certainly have the expertise that they might succeed.

Re: Standardizing WASI: A system interface to run WebAssembly outside the web

#157

Post by talkingtab »

hathawsh wrote: post #143

Solomon Hykes, co-founder of Docker, believes WASM+WASI could take the place of Docker. https://twitter.com/solomonstre/status/1111004913222324225

This. I don't have a clear enough mental model for either docker or wasm+wasi, but I immediately thought of docker. What is docker except a bunch of purpose build operating system instances? And why do we need Linux installations (as much as I am a fan of Linux) when we could just run on WASI? And Electron, where each instance runs on an individual instance of a browser?

Re: Standardizing WASI: A system interface to run WebAssembly outside the web

#158

Post by saagarjha »

vbuwivbiu wrote: post #151
otabdeveloper2 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The JVM and CLR suck balls. They put in huge amounts of effort into things that don't need solving, and the things that need to be solved they do in the most roundabout way possible. What we _really_ need is a sandboxed VM for running C code securely and efficiently. The JVM is pretty much the opposite of that; it's not sandboxed, not secure and certainly not efficient as a target for C code. We're hoping WASM starts…

"it's not sandboxed" well, it is, and it's secure and it can run bytecode as fast as C

Both of those claims need qualification: it’s not quite secure, and it’s not quite as fast as C.

Re: Standardizing WASI: A system interface to run WebAssembly outside the web

#159

Post by saagarjha »

mhh__ wrote: post #153
emerongi wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could re-implement C as well, but is it sensible if we already have C? If someone could explain the difference between WASI and JVM the way you can explain the difference between C, C++ or Rust, it would help a lot. If there is no such explanation, I think we should really question what is being accomplished here. As it stands currently, WebAssembly seems to integrate nicely with browsers, whereas JVM works nicely…

Yes. C is an absolutely terrible programming language that we use because it got their first. I sincerely hope that C (and bad C++, so probably C++ as well) is phased out over the coming years purely because it's too dangerous to use it in critical software (One life lost to memory corruption is too many). This probably won't happen, but I hope it does. JVM is pretty complicated and not open source(? I'm not entirely…

OpenJDK is GPLv2.

Re: Standardizing WASI: A system interface to run WebAssembly outside the web

#160

Post by chrisseaton »

Rusky wrote: post #124
naikrovek wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java inside the browser doesn't exist. That's fine. That's not what I'm talking about or making comparisons to. Java runs just fine outside of the browser. You don't even need a browser installed to run Java applications. Javascript and WASM run fine inside the browser, and that's not what I'm talking about or making comparisons to. I'm talking about running WASM binaries outside of the browser. Similar to how Java r…

The JVM doesn't run languages that weren't designed for it, like C or C++ or Rust. WebAssembly does. This is important for a lot of reasons- huge amounts of existing code you can now use without JNI or whatever, a higher ceiling for optimization, more freedom to implement new kinds of languages. The core WebAssembly standard is also much smaller than Java, as a consequence of this design. This makes it easier and/or…

> The JVM doesn't run languages that weren't designed for it, like C or C++ or Rust.

You can run all those languages on top of the JVM!

The JVM also runs many other languages which weren't designed for it, like Ruby and Python.

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