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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

#181

Post by pjmlp »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #132

If you’d like to get acquainted with modern WebAssembly, check out the component model book: https://component-model.bytecodealliance.org/ It includes high level concepts, practical code samples and more that introduce the really powerful parts of WebAssembly. With regards to the JS ecosystem specifically there are 3 projects to know: https://github.com/bytecodealliance/StarlingMonkey https://github.com/bytecodeallia…

Hello COM, CORBA, RMI, Jini, .NET Remoting, Tcl Agents,..., that is basically what it is.

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

#182

Post by pjmlp »

thezipcreator wrote: post #167
koenschipper wrote: post #77

This article perfectly captures the frustration of the "WebAssembly wall." Writing and maintaining the JS glue code—or relying on opaque generation tools—feels like a massive step backward when you just want to ship a performant module. The 45% overhead reduction in the Dodrio experiment by skipping the JS glue is massive. But I'm curious about the memory management implications of the WebAssembly Component Model whe…

webassembly components use a borrow checking model[1], so I assume that would be used to manage DOM components? I'm not exactly sure how this works when binding it to GC languages. [1] https://component-model.bytecodealliance.org/design/wit.html...

Proving the point of how it is dominated by Rust folks.

Maybe they should have spent some time wondering how previous component models work, e.g. COM, CORBA, RMI, .NET Remoting,....

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

#183

Post by hmry »

flohofwoe wrote: post #179
hardwaresofton wrote: post #132

If you’d like to get acquainted with modern WebAssembly, check out the component model book: https://component-model.bytecodealliance.org/ It includes high level concepts, practical code samples and more that introduce the really powerful parts of WebAssembly. With regards to the JS ecosystem specifically there are 3 projects to know: https://github.com/bytecodealliance/StarlingMonkey https://github.com/bytecodeallia…

Get your blatant component model propaganda outta here ;) (to elaborate: WASM works just fine without the component model, it's not "the future of WebAssembly", just an option built on top of it, and of questionable value tbh)

You're replying to a comment on an article about how WASM does not work fine in the browser

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

#184

Post by pjmlp »

lich_king wrote: post #154
rishflab wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The web is fascinating: we started with a seemingly insane proposition that we could let anyone run complex programs on your machine without causing profound security issues. Isnt this what an OS is supposed to do? Mobile operating systems have done a pretty good job of this compared to the desktop OS.

Mobile OSes don't allow random people to run code on your device. They allow you to install software you want and sort-of trust, which is conceptually close to the desktop model. There are some safeguards on top of that, but the primary line of defense is that cheap-pillz.virus-basket.ru can't actually execute anything on your device.

Desktop model at least on Apple, Google and Microsoft platforms is slowly adopting similar security models, boiling water and frogs kind of approach.

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

#185

Post by pjmlp »

kpcyrd wrote: post #127
bikamonki wrote: post #111

Do programmers actually write in wasm or automatic tools port/compile other languages to wasm?

It's mostly Rust compiled to wasm binaries. There's also TinyGo and you could use C/C++ as well, but those 3 are a lot less common as far as I can tell.

And Blazor, however I am not a big fan of it, it feels like an escape path for WebForm developers, and I surely don't want to debug that kind of code again, MVC is much better approach.

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

#186

Post by hrmtst93837 »

pizlonator wrote: post #5

It's simple. JavaScript is the right abstraction for running untrusted apps in a browser. WebAssembly is the wrong abstraction for running untrusted apps in a browser. Browser engines evolve independently of one another, and the same web app must be able to run in many versions of the same browser and also in different browsers. Dynamic typing is ideal for this. JavaScript has dynamic typing. Browser engines deal in…

[flagged]

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

#187

Post by hrmtst93837 »

pizlonator wrote: post #5

It's simple. JavaScript is the right abstraction for running untrusted apps in a browser. WebAssembly is the wrong abstraction for running untrusted apps in a browser. Browser engines evolve independently of one another, and the same web app must be able to run in many versions of the same browser and also in different browsers. Dynamic typing is ideal for this. JavaScript has dynamic typing. Browser engines deal in…

[flagged]

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

#188

Post by flohofwoe »

hmry wrote: post #183
flohofwoe wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get your blatant component model propaganda outta here ;) (to elaborate: WASM works just fine without the component model, it's not "the future of WebAssembly", just an option built on top of it, and of questionable value tbh)

You're replying to a comment on an article about how WASM does not work fine in the browser

The entire article boils down to one specific problem: string marshalling overhead can be optimized to be about 2x faster. Integrating the component model into browsers is overkill for that (and everything else belongs into the toolchains without touching the browser guts).

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

#189

Post by [deleted] »

davexunit wrote: post #44
mananaysiempre wrote: post #9

This (appears as though it) all could have happened half a decade ago had the interface-types people not abandoned[1,2] their initial problem statement of WebIDL support in WebAssembly in favour of building Yet Another IDL while declaring[3] the lack of DOM access a non-issue. (I understand the market realities that led to this, I think. This wasn’t a whim or pure NIH. Yet I still cannot help but lament the lost time…

I really want stringref to make a comeback.

[deleted]

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

#190

Post by hmry »

flohofwoe wrote: post #188
hmry wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're replying to a comment on an article about how WASM does not work fine in the browser

The entire article boils down to one specific problem: string marshalling overhead can be optimized to be about 2x faster. Integrating the component model into browsers is overkill for that (and everything else belongs into the toolchains without touching the browser guts).

> The entire article boils down to one specific problem: string marshalling overhead

No, I don't think so at all. 80% of the article is about other problems (JS bindings are complicated to generate and a leaky abstraction, additional tools beyond the compiler are required, compiler authors don't want to deal with them, they increase the friction for getting started, they're hard to debug, ...)

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