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Just because its binary doesn't mean it can't be studied. Even with something like compiled native machine code its still relatively easy to disassemble and loo
by pager86 10y ago
Just because its binary doesn't mean it can't be studied. Even with something like compiled native machine code its still relatively easy to disassemble and look at how it works with the right tools. With WebAssembly, dissassembly should be even easier and be more clear than native x86 or something. Still not as easy as well written javascript, but I expect it will approach the difficulty of minified js.
In my eyes, the size and offline compilation aren't even the biggest benefits. Having a low level assembly language for web computation lets people write in any language and compile it for the web. There's already an LLVM backend for it - although still experimental. But this may even mean we can simply port existing codebases to WebAssembly with little performance loss.
You've been able to compile stuff for web for a while, by transpiling to javascript, but the result has been too slow for many applications, so it never really picked up.
- batmansmk 10y agoYou have asmjs working well for 3 years to cover your usecase. WebAssembly is not really faster to execute than asmjs in our tests.
- azakai 10y ago> I expect it will approach the difficulty of minified js. WebAssembly has less structure than minified JS (instructions are a linear list - a stack machine - for example) and it is less hackable (it isn't intended to be written or modified by hand). WebAssembly will be somewhere in between native x86 and minified JS in terms of how open it is to being studied.