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Your question is related to the technical aspects of the ecosystem, but not to the way that people use computers in general. A good rhetorical question in resp

Your question is related to the technical aspects of the ecosystem, but not to the way that people use computers in general. A good rhetorical question in response is, why is the web so much more popular when using computers than installed applications? The implication you've made is that there is no benefit to the web, but that is obviously not true, as web usage far outstrips installed applications (besides the browser) at this point. Given this, it becomes necessary to have common tooling to target the different browsers out there. Getting back to the core of your question, if there was a framework for which you could target all users on the internet (with a single codebase), it ran natively on all platforms, was easily run by everyone merely by clicking on an icon, which then cleans itself up after running... then maybe native apps would be a good avenue for delivering all applications.

qznc 9y ago
What is the advantage of wasm over Java and Flash? I don't really see technical advantages. There is only the social/legal aspect: wasm is not controlled by a single corporation.
- steveklabnik 9y ago
  wasm is more baked into the web platform than either are; flash wasn't as bad as java in this regard, but still. Nobody wrote flash libraries that your JS code could use, they used it for the equivalent of a big old <canvas>. It also does not require a second runtime; integrating wasm support into existing JS VMs took very little code compared to an entire JVM or flash runtime.
  - djur 9y ago
    > Nobody wrote flash libraries that your JS code could use This isn't precisely true. Before widespread availability of similar HTML 5 features, Flash was used for file upload (especially multiple files w/ progress bars), clipboard access, and pre-websockets network push. Client-side image processing, too, although you might consider that as part of the "big old <canvas>" usage. Your overall point is right on, of course.
    - steveklabnik 9y ago
      Ah that is fair! I forgot about those, but you're right.
- Rusky 9y ago
  There is an immense technical advantage: wasm doesn't enforce a high-level memory model like the JVM's classes or Flash's ActionScript. It allows straightforward use as a compiler target for low level languages which do not use a bytecode verifier for safety. Any attempt to use those languages or their existing ecosystems of code on the JVM, Flash, or Javascript will be incredibly fragile and convoluted.
  - fulafel 9y ago
    The WASM memory is just a Uint8Array in the JS VM. You can use a big byte array and du manual memory management in JVM too. It's a well known pattern on the JVM.
    - Rusky 9y ago
      That's entirely unhelpful for the call stack, values stored in registers, loading and storing other sizes, atomics, etc... Wasm solves that because it's aware of what it's doing. Java et al do not.

qznc 9y ago

What is the advantage of wasm over Java and Flash? I don't really see technical advantages. There is only the social/legal aspect: wasm is not controlled by a single corporation.

steveklabnik 9y ago
wasm is more baked into the web platform than either are; flash wasn't as bad as java in this regard, but still. Nobody wrote flash libraries that your JS code could use, they used it for the equivalent of a big old <canvas>. It also does not require a second runtime; integrating wasm support into existing JS VMs took very little code compared to an entire JVM or flash runtime.
- djur 9y ago
  > Nobody wrote flash libraries that your JS code could use This isn't precisely true. Before widespread availability of similar HTML 5 features, Flash was used for file upload (especially multiple files w/ progress bars), clipboard access, and pre-websockets network push. Client-side image processing, too, although you might consider that as part of the "big old <canvas>" usage. Your overall point is right on, of course.
  - steveklabnik 9y ago
    Ah that is fair! I forgot about those, but you're right.
Rusky 9y ago
There is an immense technical advantage: wasm doesn't enforce a high-level memory model like the JVM's classes or Flash's ActionScript. It allows straightforward use as a compiler target for low level languages which do not use a bytecode verifier for safety. Any attempt to use those languages or their existing ecosystems of code on the JVM, Flash, or Javascript will be incredibly fragile and convoluted.
- fulafel 9y ago
  The WASM memory is just a Uint8Array in the JS VM. You can use a big byte array and du manual memory management in JVM too. It's a well known pattern on the JVM.
  - Rusky 9y ago
    That's entirely unhelpful for the call stack, values stored in registers, loading and storing other sizes, atomics, etc... Wasm solves that because it's aware of what it's doing. Java et al do not.