3 ms·

I agree, but at the same time I look at the Webassembly web page, and they explicitly state that replacing Javascript is not their objective. Why is that?

JBiserkov 9y ago
So the next generation can't have nice things either :). It seems to me that the history of computing so far can be summarized as "due to popular demand, things have been used far outside their creator's intended scope, with 3-4 non-horrible results". (Lisp is definitely one, can't think of another on the top of my head).
- devrandomguy 9y ago
  If only we had used Lisps for all the things! We could have had Lisp instead of JS, but no, that would have worked too well; management wants Java. We almost had a Scheme instead of CSS: DSSSL, which could also do structural transformations of the document tree. But once again, no. The simplicity multiplied by the flexibility of a Lisp, equaled unacceptable complexity, for some strange definition of complexity. XML looks like it really, really wanted to be a Lisp, what with its orderly nesting of tags. I almost wonder if XML stumbled and fell, due to the supporting pillars of parens being knocked out or corrupted, left, right and center.
mtvrandom 9y ago
<excessive snark deleted>
wotamRobin 9y ago
To make an analogy, right now it's possible to write and include C++ modules in your Python scripts, just like it's possible to do with WASM/JS. But people still use Python, because it's a much faster/easier way to get a specific kind of thing done. So WASM is a great tool, but not a good choice for building something like HN, where perf isn't an issue. Iteration speed, debuggability, and the GC make HTML/CSS/JS a better choice here.
throwasehasdwi 9y ago
It's not the overall objective but that's exactly the objective of a lot of people rooting for it. Think of how many people would be pissed off if they said "we're gonna try to replace javascript". Google did that with Dart and everyone gave them the finger... sunk cost fallacy. Better to develop something for "performance" that just happens to be able to replace JS as a side benefit. Makes it a lot easier to swallow
- copperx 9y ago
  So what you're saying is that WASM is a Trojan horse.
  - throwasehasdwi 9y ago
    If you disagree with javascript losing dominance I guess you could say so. It's really just a way to make it easy to run whatever language you want in the browser in a cross-platform compatible way. I don't see this as a bad thing at all.

JBiserkov 9y ago

So the next generation can't have nice things either :). It seems to me that the history of computing so far can be summarized as "due to popular demand, things have been used far outside their creator's intended scope, with 3-4 non-horrible results". (Lisp is definitely one, can't think of another on the top of my head).

devrandomguy 9y ago
If only we had used Lisps for all the things! We could have had Lisp instead of JS, but no, that would have worked too well; management wants Java. We almost had a Scheme instead of CSS: DSSSL, which could also do structural transformations of the document tree. But once again, no. The simplicity multiplied by the flexibility of a Lisp, equaled unacceptable complexity, for some strange definition of complexity. XML looks like it really, really wanted to be a Lisp, what with its orderly nesting of tags. I almost wonder if XML stumbled and fell, due to the supporting pillars of parens being knocked out or corrupted, left, right and center.

mtvrandom 9y ago

wotamRobin 9y ago

To make an analogy, right now it's possible to write and include C++ modules in your Python scripts, just like it's possible to do with WASM/JS. But people still use Python, because it's a much faster/easier way to get a specific kind of thing done. So WASM is a great tool, but not a good choice for building something like HN, where perf isn't an issue. Iteration speed, debuggability, and the GC make HTML/CSS/JS a better choice here.

throwasehasdwi 9y ago

It's not the overall objective but that's exactly the objective of a lot of people rooting for it. Think of how many people would be pissed off if they said "we're gonna try to replace javascript". Google did that with Dart and everyone gave them the finger... sunk cost fallacy. Better to develop something for "performance" that just happens to be able to replace JS as a side benefit. Makes it a lot easier to swallow

copperx 9y ago
So what you're saying is that WASM is a Trojan horse.
- throwasehasdwi 9y ago
  If you disagree with javascript losing dominance I guess you could say so. It's really just a way to make it easy to run whatever language you want in the browser in a cross-platform compatible way. I don't see this as a bad thing at all.