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WebAssembly 101: A developer’s first steps

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Re: WebAssembly 101: A developer’s first steps

#71

Post by flavio81 »

BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #59

I wonder where the world is going with this. At first glance it looks like webassembly is a potential faster replacement for javascript in the browser. However, javascript is an increasingly popular language everywhere. I'm not sure people will want to move away from it for most development. The part that is actually causing performance problems with web application is the HTML/CSS/DOM layer which was not designed as…

Javascript is fine, but as you already know, everybody wants to use his/her language of choice. And, more importantly, everybody should be able to choose the right language for the specific task.

What could happen, with WebAssembly, is the opposite: A wane in Javascript's popularity.

Re: WebAssembly 101: A developer’s first steps

#72

Post by gnaritas »

BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #59

I wonder where the world is going with this. At first glance it looks like webassembly is a potential faster replacement for javascript in the browser. However, javascript is an increasingly popular language everywhere. I'm not sure people will want to move away from it for most development. The part that is actually causing performance problems with web application is the HTML/CSS/DOM layer which was not designed as…

> However, javascript is an increasingly popular language everywhere. I'm not sure people will want to move away from it for most development.

You'd be wrong, many people would love to move away from to something better. There are many better languages than JS and we'd like to not be limited to one shitty quirky hastily designed language in the browser.

Re: WebAssembly 101: A developer’s first steps

#73

Post by flavio81 »

I am very excited by this project, it opens up a lot of possibilities. Finally we can use our users' web browsers to the maximum potential, in the language of choice.

Consider: If a good javascript engine like V8 can go as far as being able to emulate hardware, how far can we go with something like webassembly?

All the power to Webassembly!

Re: WebAssembly 101: A developer’s first steps

#75

Post by dennykane »

dennykane wrote: post #28

You can play my favorite arcade game ever in a wasm gameboy emulator (credit goes to Ben Smith of Google: https://github.com/binji/binjgb ) in a web-based OS I've been working on for 5 years. This is known to work in current Chrome and Firefox. Keyboard game controls: 'w'=up 'a'=left 's'=down 'd'=right '.'=A ','=B space=start enter=select. Also, standard (17 button, 4 axis) USB gamepads should "just work" via plug'n'…

Can anybody tell me if they can play the game, with a USB gamepad or without? Can anybody break 100,000? My highest score playing this on the site has been around 85,000 (my highest lifetime arcade score is probably around 300,000 or so).

BTW, I actually like hanging out here on the bottom of the comments (I find the people that hang out at the top of popular HN threads to be boring, unoriginal, petty jerks... so please don't vote me up!).

Re: WebAssembly 101: A developer’s first steps

#76

Post by stcredzero »

flavio81 wrote: post #71
BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #59

I wonder where the world is going with this. At first glance it looks like webassembly is a potential faster replacement for javascript in the browser. However, javascript is an increasingly popular language everywhere. I'm not sure people will want to move away from it for most development. The part that is actually causing performance problems with web application is the HTML/CSS/DOM layer which was not designed as…

Javascript is fine, but as you already know, everybody wants to use his/her language of choice. And, more importantly, everybody should be able to choose the right language for the specific task. What could happen, with WebAssembly, is the opposite: A wane in Javascript's popularity.

What could happen, with WebAssembly, is the opposite: A wane in Javascript's popularity.

If the right moves happen, possible. If the wrong moves happen, it will be the second coming of plugins. Languages based on WebAssembly have to be 1st class citizens in the browser infrastructure, otherwise it will be a repeat. This means that debugging has to be transparent. Access to the DOM has to be ultimately the same.

Re: WebAssembly 101: A developer’s first steps

#77

Post by mmjaa »

BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #59

I wonder where the world is going with this. At first glance it looks like webassembly is a potential faster replacement for javascript in the browser. However, javascript is an increasingly popular language everywhere. I'm not sure people will want to move away from it for most development. The part that is actually causing performance problems with web application is the HTML/CSS/DOM layer which was not designed as…

It doesn't all have to be javascript, HTML and DOM, you know. That's why this is an important step.

Wanna use TurboPascal to write apps, and target the entire known universe of Web browsers? Go right ahead. You can do that now.

Of course, I'm being extreme, but .. you know .. there are other great ways to exploit WebAssembly as a target, and save yourself a huge amount of cultmind headache by avoiding all of the so-called "higher" layers of the stack, completely.

For example, I'm quite happy writing the most cross-platform'est code, in like, ever, using Lua.

And targeting WebAssembly in this circumstance is a no-brainer.

Re: WebAssembly 101: A developer’s first steps

#78

Post by ThePhysicist »

BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #59

I wonder where the world is going with this. At first glance it looks like webassembly is a potential faster replacement for javascript in the browser. However, javascript is an increasingly popular language everywhere. I'm not sure people will want to move away from it for most development. The part that is actually causing performance problems with web application is the HTML/CSS/DOM layer which was not designed as…

For me the main potential of asm.js/WebAssembly does not lie in the fact that it is faster, but in that it provides us with a way to run native C/C++ code inside the browser without adapting it (much), and doing this at a speed which is not (much) worse than the speed of the original code.

This in turn makes functionality that was traditionally very hard to get in a browser/JS environment suddenly very easy to get:

- Cryptographic libraries (e.g. libcrypto)

- Libraries for numerical data manipulation and analysis

- Compression libraries

- Video codecs

- ...

This ability will lead to a paradigm shift (IMHO), because instead of having to reproduce all this functionality in JS (which would be crazy) you can just cross-compile it and use it right away. Also, with WebAssembly, browser vendors can simply focus on providing good and secure interfaces to a limited amount of low-level functions (IO, graphics) while letting the user define the high-level usage of these interfaces. If this works out well I can even imagine this technology spilling over to other domains, because what it provides is essentially a secure, portable, low-level sandbox with a very good performance and a huge installation base.

Re: WebAssembly 101: A developer’s first steps

#80

Post by infinityplus1 »

snomad wrote: post #47
icedchai wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope future generations are going to laugh at what a what a kluge "web app" development was... but I'm not so sure. We'd have been better off fixing Java applets, instead of reinventing the wheel. So now 20 years later, we're cross compiling C...

After 20 years of web dev, I gave native development (UWP) a shot. I kinda assumed that after so much time Microsoft would have windows development dialed in and it would be sane. Ha!

How was your experience with UWP?
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