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> So, in my opinion, the true benefit of WASM is the ability to compile into it from other low-level languages, but not the preformance. That may be true for n
by trgv 9y ago
> So, in my opinion, the true benefit of WASM is the ability to compile into it from other low-level languages, but not the preformance.
That may be true for now, but there are other advantages that have at least something to do with performance.
For one thing, wasm bytecode can be decoded much faster than JavaScript can be parsed. I'm not really aware of situations when parsing speed is an issue, but I imagine there are situations where this is nice.
In general, it will be easier to add new features to wasm compared to JavaScript. Presumably this means features like threads will land in wasm much sooner than in JavaScript, but we'll see.
- batmansmk 9y ago> For one thing, wasm bytecode can be decoded much faster than JavaScript can be parsed True, but as long as you have space for cache, it only goes faster once. Wasm is also loaded by JS itself and of limited usage right. I think the first comment is actually accurate about the state of wasm. It only brings value to people compiling from C/C++ to the web. It is not a technology of the future, but a retrofit for the past.
- fenwick67 9y ago> I'm not really aware of situations when parsing speed is an issue, but I imagine there are situations where this is nice. When it's a big transpiled application (ex: games, the "Run Windows 95 in Your Browser" demos), it has a real impact since the binary is just so large. This is probably the biggest jump between asm.js and WebAssembly.