I think you're misunderstanding Fil's point: JS is more expressive, and can often encode more things in a smaller package. For same-code wasm / asm.js / x86 co

I think you're misunderstanding Fil's point: JS is more expressive, and can often encode more things in a smaller package. For same-code wasm / asm.js / x86 comparison (not what Fil was talking about) see section 7.3: https://github.com/WebAssembly/spec/blob/master/papers/pldi2017.pdf https://github.com/WebAssembly/spec/blob/master/papers/pldi2... Additionally, WebAssembly definitely needs to be parsed. See: https://github.com/WebKit/webkit/blob/master/Source/JavaScriptCore/wasm/WasmModuleParser.cpp https://github.com/WebKit/webkit/blob/master/Source/JavaScri... and https://github.com/WebKit/webkit/blob/master/Source/JavaScriptCore/wasm/WasmFunctionParser.h https://github.com/WebKit/webkit/blob/master/Source/JavaScri... Granted, that's simpler than parsing JavaScript.