4 ms·

WebAssembly is not worth the effort unless it finally is supported by the LINK tag. Seriously, using JS to load a JS alternative is ridiculous.

themihai 9y ago
I can't agree more...but I believe the issue is that WASM sold a lie. Right now if you read between the lines it is argued that WASM is there just to help JS do more not to replace it.
- rhabarba 9y ago
  I played a bit with WASM and I like its approach, but the one thing that annoys me most with web development is the limited number of client-side languages. WASM can be great if they allow it to.
- saosebastiao 9y ago
  > WASM is there just to help JS do more not to replace it That certainly is a shame, but it's not like we have to accept that as the future. HTML is a document markup language, but we've hijacked it to build interactive UIs. It might be that WASM is just a native-ish FFI system for javascript today, but tomorrow it could be something completely different.
- moosingin3space 9y ago
  > WASM sold a lie What? The original WebAssembly announcement[1], which can be viewed as the manifesto for how WASM was envisioned, it clearly says "once browsers support the WebAssembly syntax natively, JS and wasm can diverge". Eich's goal with WebAssembly is not replacing JS, it's providing a better compilation target for other languages. WebAssembly is a replacement for asm.js, not JavaScript. No one is selling a lie here. [1]: https://brendaneich.com/2015/06/from-asm-js-to-webassembly/ https://brendaneich.com/2015/06/from-asm-js-to-webassembly/
krapp 9y ago
Before HTML5 deprecated it, it was assumed that browsers would just supply plugins to support various scripting languages or whatever, which is why the <script> tag had a type attribute. Unfortunately, integrating a new runtime like <script type="text/lua" src="main.lua" module="lua.wasm"/> will probably never happen. A link tag, to me, specifies a static resource rather than executable code (although since CSS supports animations now that's probably a distinction without a difference.) <object> might be a good candidate but I don't know if it's still supported. But, we can't get rid of JS altogether. Browsers will have to support javascript indefinitely, otherwise most of the web becomes unreadable. That being the case, using JS to load WebAssembly seems like the most reasonable backwards-compatible compromise available.
- rhabarba 9y ago
  I consider it to be broken web design if a website requires JS to display text. I could live with a hard cut.

themihai 9y ago

I can't agree more...but I believe the issue is that WASM sold a lie. Right now if you read between the lines it is argued that WASM is there just to help JS do more not to replace it.

rhabarba 9y ago
I played a bit with WASM and I like its approach, but the one thing that annoys me most with web development is the limited number of client-side languages. WASM can be great if they allow it to.
saosebastiao 9y ago
> WASM is there just to help JS do more not to replace it That certainly is a shame, but it's not like we have to accept that as the future. HTML is a document markup language, but we've hijacked it to build interactive UIs. It might be that WASM is just a native-ish FFI system for javascript today, but tomorrow it could be something completely different.
moosingin3space 9y ago
> WASM sold a lie What? The original WebAssembly announcement[1], which can be viewed as the manifesto for how WASM was envisioned, it clearly says "once browsers support the WebAssembly syntax natively, JS and wasm can diverge". Eich's goal with WebAssembly is not replacing JS, it's providing a better compilation target for other languages. WebAssembly is a replacement for asm.js, not JavaScript. No one is selling a lie here. [1]: https://brendaneich.com/2015/06/from-asm-js-to-webassembly/ https://brendaneich.com/2015/06/from-asm-js-to-webassembly/

krapp 9y ago

Before HTML5 deprecated it, it was assumed that browsers would just supply plugins to support various scripting languages or whatever, which is why the <script> tag had a type attribute. Unfortunately, integrating a new runtime like <script type="text/lua" src="main.lua" module="lua.wasm"/> will probably never happen. A link tag, to me, specifies a static resource rather than executable code (although since CSS supports animations now that's probably a distinction without a difference.) <object> might be a good candidate but I don't know if it's still supported. But, we can't get rid of JS altogether. Browsers will have to support javascript indefinitely, otherwise most of the web becomes unreadable. That being the case, using JS to load WebAssembly seems like the most reasonable backwards-compatible compromise available.

rhabarba 9y ago
I consider it to be broken web design if a website requires JS to display text. I could live with a hard cut.