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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

#221

Post by speefers »

aacid wrote: post #214
neonstatic wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I for one am thankful to them for it. I think we need a return to the real native. The JS/Web-slop has gone too far.

I personally hate that I need to download app from every company for every service they offer. On the other hand I love tje simplicity of opening webpage, do what I want to do there and forget it. Probably 80% of app in my phone are used very rarely, often just once yet they still sit there, getting updates, requesting permissions and sometimes eating battery... good web app can do everything native app can.

[dead]

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

#222

Post by davexunit »

dfabulich wrote: post #173
spankalee wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My god yes. I'm building a new Wasm GC-based language and I'm trying to make as small as binaries as possible to target use cases like a module-per-UI-component, and strings are the biggest hinderance to that. Both for the code size and the slow JS interop.

Who killed stringref and why?

It couldn't get past a vote in the Wasm community group to advance from phase 1 to phase 2.

Here's a quote from the "requiem for stringref" article mentioned above:

> 1. WebAssembly is an instruction set, like AArch64 or x86. Strings are too high-level, and should be built on top, for example with (array i8).

> 2. The requirement to support fast WTF-16 code unit access will mean that we are effectively standardizing JavaScript strings.

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

#223

Post by gumby271 »

neonstatic wrote: post #193
leptons wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to wonder if Apple will allow any of this to move forward in the W3C standards committee since they've been blocking many things that would make web browsers as capable as native apps. Apple perceives web-based applications as chipping away at their app store (which makes them money), and so they cripple their Safari browser and then force all mobile browsers on iOS to use their browser engine, no exceptions,…

I for one am thankful to them for it. I think we need a return to the real native. The JS/Web-slop has gone too far.

But the app-slop is totally fine right? Apple controlling every piece of software on my phone hasn't gone too far? Empowering the web to compete with Apple and Google's native locked down options is the only viable alternative I see.

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

#224

Post by mendyberger »

lich_king wrote: post #51

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. And it turned out that this was insane: we endured 20 years of serious browser security bugs caused chiefly by JavaScript. I'm not saying it wasn't worth it, but it was also crazy. And now that we're getting close to have the right design princi…

Wasm is safer since it has a much smaller attack surface.

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

#225

Post by gumby271 »

u1hcw9nx wrote: post #208

This was supposed to happen already in the 2000s. JVM in everywhere, especially in the browser. There was Java rings you could wear, Java Card VM (JCVM), Squawk VM, Java ME. "Java the language is almost irrelevant. It's the design of the Java Virtual Machine. And I've seen compilers for ML, compilers for Scheme, compilers for Ada, and they all work. Not many people use them, but it doesn't matter: they all work." --J…

Which is very much Google's approach to Android. AOSP could be targeted directly by devs, but Google pushes everyone to use Google services in their apps (and assume it's available on any android device) which means Android with Google services is the only viable version of Android out there.

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

#226

Post by u1hcw9nx »

gumby271 wrote: post #225
u1hcw9nx wrote: post #208

This was supposed to happen already in the 2000s. JVM in everywhere, especially in the browser. There was Java rings you could wear, Java Card VM (JCVM), Squawk VM, Java ME. "Java the language is almost irrelevant. It's the design of the Java Virtual Machine. And I've seen compilers for ML, compilers for Scheme, compilers for Ada, and they all work. Not many people use them, but it doesn't matter: they all work." --J…

Which is very much Google's approach to Android. AOSP could be targeted directly by devs, but Google pushes everyone to use Google services in their apps (and assume it's available on any android device) which means Android with Google services is the only viable version of Android out there.

Google and Apple both.

Most "apps" in phones could be just something you install trough browser and cache in a sandbox if we developed good standards.

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

#227

Post by wffurr »

spankalee wrote: post #119
davexunit wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really want stringref to make a comeback.

My god yes. I'm building a new Wasm GC-based language and I'm trying to make as small as binaries as possible to target use cases like a module-per-UI-component, and strings are the biggest hinderance to that. Both for the code size and the slow JS interop.

Can you use WTF-16 for strings in your language?

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

#228

Post by wffurr »

u1hcw9nx wrote: post #208

This was supposed to happen already in the 2000s. JVM in everywhere, especially in the browser. There was Java rings you could wear, Java Card VM (JCVM), Squawk VM, Java ME. "Java the language is almost irrelevant. It's the design of the Java Virtual Machine. And I've seen compilers for ML, compilers for Scheme, compilers for Ada, and they all work. Not many people use them, but it doesn't matter: they all work." --J…

JVM bytecode didn't have support for C and required GC. Even in the early days it was a lot heavier than Wasm.

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

#229

Post by rubzah »

flohofwoe wrote: post #6

It's still not a great idea IMHO ;) (there was also some more recent discussion in here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47295837 ) E.g. it feels like a lot of over-engineering just to get 2x faster string marshalling, and this is only important for exactly one use case: for creating a 1:1 mapping of the DOM API to WASM. Most other web APIs are by far not as 'granular' and string heavy as the DOM. E.g. if I main…

Yeah, I don't think it bears out that DOM operation invocations constitute a major bottleneck for a lot of web applications. Certainly the execution of those operations (like layout invalidation and calculation) can be expensive, but those would not benefit. I can't think of applications with a massive amount of DOM calls that would benefit from lower latency.

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

#230

Post by utopiah »

I feel like the bottleneck for WASM integration isn't WASM itself but rather how to interface with it.

Quite often it comes with a mandatory service worker which has to be communicated to in a specific fashion, then some specific headers need to be available server side, etc. I'm not saying it's not required but ... I imagine most Web developer are used to requiring a library, calling its function, getting the result. Until it reaches that stage then JavaScript fallbacks will be preferred until there is absolutely no alternative but the WASM binary.

PS: this might sound like such a low bar... but the alternative is giving up entirely on either, starting a container with a REST API then calling it with a client. That's very easy and convenient when you've done it once and you decouple. So maybe I'm finicky but when very popular alternatives exist I believe the tipping point won't happen unless it becomes radically easier than what exists.

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