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> WASM replaces Javascript as the target of other language compilers. Ugggh, still no evidence. WASM is a compile target in a sandbox. It is the new Flash or

> WASM replaces Javascript as the target of other language compilers. Ugggh, still no evidence. WASM is a compile target in a sandbox. It is the new Flash or Java applet. Everything else is a wish list from people incredibly insecure about touching JavaScript. So far any advocation that WASM will magically replace JavaScript severely misunderstands both WASM and JavaScript. I will continue to await something more than mere fantasy.

floatboth 9y ago
WASM replaces Javascript as the target of other language compilers. JavaScript is also a compile target in a sandbox. Emscripten started with outputting plain JS, then that was optimized to asm.js, now optimized to WASM. I completely agree that WASM should NOT replace JS for normal DOM apps. It's currently possible through awkward calls into JS, and might be possible in the future more directly, but there's no need to replace JS.
- austincheney 9y ago
  > WASM replaces Javascript as the target of other language compilers. No, it does not. Compiling to WASM is not a replacement or synonym for compiling to JavaScript. JavaScript is not locked in a sandbox, in the same way, as it has a multitude of APIs. WASM does not have such APIs as it is just the sandbox. Here is the deal. All modern browsers now claim to support WASM. If WASM were capable of replacing JavaScript it would do so right now, but it isn't because it cannot. The demand is certainly there and yet despite that demand the results are completely absent. People claim this is because WASM lacks DOM bindings. True, but that is only a tiny bit of it. WASM also does not have a security model around code/data distribution. WASM also does not have access to the chrome of the browser (the parts outside the DOM). I also haven't heard much about asynchronous threads in WASM, which is a huge requirement when working with distributed code execution. This list could go on and on. This is common knowledge for people who do this work professionally. There is an incredible amount of work to do before an arbitrary compile target can replace a major platform consideration, and much of that work isn't API bindings. The people who claim WASM as a replacement for JavaScript, as evidenced on r/programming, tend to be the people most ignorant and fearful of JavaScript. They want a replacement so badly they assume this is it without any consideration for what the technical requirements are, because they have no idea what they are.
  - exikyut 9y ago
    I'm starting to get fed up by the open-ended trust models used by most forum software on the internet. slashdot started in 1997. phpBB was started in 2000. 4chan accidentally in 2003. reddit was put together in 2005. HN was created in 2007. I think 2007-2010 was a tipping point where people started to collectively get smarter and more sophisticated on the Web. I'm not saying everyone was dumb before that, but that... you needed to be more cynical and you couldn't just depend on something's ridiculousness to know whether it was fake or not. 4chan maintained a troll mentality that made it obvious some things were real and some were not, and many people there there knows not to believe everything they see - maybe not a 51% majority, but just enough that the integrity of an awareness culture is maintained. HN got started around the tipping point I just described, which might explain why it's lasted a while. But all the others... they're based on old ideas, old notions of trust. The culture is based on openness and contemporaneously broken interpretations of the idea of freedom of speech - so anybody gets on there and declaratively makes their point, and everyone believes them like it's tort law and utterly official. Maybe that's why reddit gets blamed for being a hivemind. Not quite sure if I'm talking hot air through ten hats here, but I'm just mad there isn't an IQ test to be casually involved in tech because EVERYONE has such crippling levels of "oh no I don't understand this so I'll just believe this thing here and won't fact-check it for myself". At least on reddit this seems to be the case. Yes, that's really harsh, but I see it as the facts of the situation. If I'm wrong please do let me know.
    - zaptheimpaler 9y ago
      Its a good point, and a lot broader than tech or online forums. The end point of "everyone gets an equal say" is noisy, bad consensus, because not everyone deserves an equal say - that invalidates the whole idea of differences in skill/knowledge among domains across people. Its why the modern world uses representative democracies, rather than direct democracies because no one person is qualified (or has enough time) to make decisions about the minutiae of FISA amendments, cooperation treaties between US-Israel space programs and federal food stamp programs at the same time. I think early HN (and the web) were small enough that only people who really cared used them, so stuff tended to be high-quality even though they were open to all. As audience grows, content gets worse. Quora is another great example of a forum being destroyed by scale. Plus now that people actually use forums, there are millions of "growth marketers" trying to push their agenda that further muddy the waters and increase noise. The ads, "native" ads, clickfarms, massive networks of sockpuppets and ads masquerading as "content". I wish I had a solution.. but the only resilient one I see is a real old-school human community. A network of people you trust. Friends basically :p Also, if anyone has books or pointers to read more about this kind of stuff, please tell me!!!!
johncolanduoni 9y ago
Nobody was claiming that WASM would replace JavaScript in general, magically or otherwise. I think there's reason to believe it will replace asm.js since it's already being integrated into Emscripten and the major browsers have already landed support in their stable releases. I find comparing it to Flash or Java applets weird, given the fact that you clearly understand that it doesn't interact with the outside world using any WASM-specific APIs. Both Flash and Java applets could in theory interact with the outside world only via a JavaScript wrapper but that was never the use case they were aimed towards either in theory or practice. Flash and Java applets also used languages that map much better to JavaScript's execution and memory models than C/C++ do, so the APIs were a big part of what you were getting by going that route (especially in Flash's case, where you had to learn a totally different programming language just for Flash). Unless you consider people who using things like Node.js or Electron to be "insecure about touching C/C++" I don't see where you get off saying that about people who want to use WASM. Sometimes you have existing code or expertise in a certain language, or it simply fits your problem better.
- austincheney 9y ago
  > Nobody was claiming that WASM would replace JavaScript in general, magically or otherwise. That is literally what I have heard directly on here and Reddit numerous times. > Unless you consider people who using things like Node.js or Electron to be "insecure about touching C/C++" I don't see where you get off saying that about people who want to use WASM. I am not saying that about WASM. I am saying that about the people who obsessively NEED for WASM to replace JavaScript and believe this to be a magically solution.
  - johncolanduoni 9y ago
    > That is literally what I have heard directly on here and Reddit numerous times. That's great, then post in response to those comments instead of ones focusing on WASM as a new compilation target. Repeatedly.

floatboth 9y ago

WASM replaces Javascript as the target of other language compilers. JavaScript is also a compile target in a sandbox. Emscripten started with outputting plain JS, then that was optimized to asm.js, now optimized to WASM. I completely agree that WASM should NOT replace JS for normal DOM apps. It's currently possible through awkward calls into JS, and might be possible in the future more directly, but there's no need to replace JS.

austincheney 9y ago
> WASM replaces Javascript as the target of other language compilers. No, it does not. Compiling to WASM is not a replacement or synonym for compiling to JavaScript. JavaScript is not locked in a sandbox, in the same way, as it has a multitude of APIs. WASM does not have such APIs as it is just the sandbox. Here is the deal. All modern browsers now claim to support WASM. If WASM were capable of replacing JavaScript it would do so right now, but it isn't because it cannot. The demand is certainly there and yet despite that demand the results are completely absent. People claim this is because WASM lacks DOM bindings. True, but that is only a tiny bit of it. WASM also does not have a security model around code/data distribution. WASM also does not have access to the chrome of the browser (the parts outside the DOM). I also haven't heard much about asynchronous threads in WASM, which is a huge requirement when working with distributed code execution. This list could go on and on. This is common knowledge for people who do this work professionally. There is an incredible amount of work to do before an arbitrary compile target can replace a major platform consideration, and much of that work isn't API bindings. The people who claim WASM as a replacement for JavaScript, as evidenced on r/programming, tend to be the people most ignorant and fearful of JavaScript. They want a replacement so badly they assume this is it without any consideration for what the technical requirements are, because they have no idea what they are.
- exikyut 9y ago
  I'm starting to get fed up by the open-ended trust models used by most forum software on the internet. slashdot started in 1997. phpBB was started in 2000. 4chan accidentally in 2003. reddit was put together in 2005. HN was created in 2007. I think 2007-2010 was a tipping point where people started to collectively get smarter and more sophisticated on the Web. I'm not saying everyone was dumb before that, but that... you needed to be more cynical and you couldn't just depend on something's ridiculousness to know whether it was fake or not. 4chan maintained a troll mentality that made it obvious some things were real and some were not, and many people there there knows not to believe everything they see - maybe not a 51% majority, but just enough that the integrity of an awareness culture is maintained. HN got started around the tipping point I just described, which might explain why it's lasted a while. But all the others... they're based on old ideas, old notions of trust. The culture is based on openness and contemporaneously broken interpretations of the idea of freedom of speech - so anybody gets on there and declaratively makes their point, and everyone believes them like it's tort law and utterly official. Maybe that's why reddit gets blamed for being a hivemind. Not quite sure if I'm talking hot air through ten hats here, but I'm just mad there isn't an IQ test to be casually involved in tech because EVERYONE has such crippling levels of "oh no I don't understand this so I'll just believe this thing here and won't fact-check it for myself". At least on reddit this seems to be the case. Yes, that's really harsh, but I see it as the facts of the situation. If I'm wrong please do let me know.
  - zaptheimpaler 9y ago
    Its a good point, and a lot broader than tech or online forums. The end point of "everyone gets an equal say" is noisy, bad consensus, because not everyone deserves an equal say - that invalidates the whole idea of differences in skill/knowledge among domains across people. Its why the modern world uses representative democracies, rather than direct democracies because no one person is qualified (or has enough time) to make decisions about the minutiae of FISA amendments, cooperation treaties between US-Israel space programs and federal food stamp programs at the same time. I think early HN (and the web) were small enough that only people who really cared used them, so stuff tended to be high-quality even though they were open to all. As audience grows, content gets worse. Quora is another great example of a forum being destroyed by scale. Plus now that people actually use forums, there are millions of "growth marketers" trying to push their agenda that further muddy the waters and increase noise. The ads, "native" ads, clickfarms, massive networks of sockpuppets and ads masquerading as "content". I wish I had a solution.. but the only resilient one I see is a real old-school human community. A network of people you trust. Friends basically :p Also, if anyone has books or pointers to read more about this kind of stuff, please tell me!!!!

johncolanduoni 9y ago

Nobody was claiming that WASM would replace JavaScript in general, magically or otherwise. I think there's reason to believe it will replace asm.js since it's already being integrated into Emscripten and the major browsers have already landed support in their stable releases. I find comparing it to Flash or Java applets weird, given the fact that you clearly understand that it doesn't interact with the outside world using any WASM-specific APIs. Both Flash and Java applets could in theory interact with the outside world only via a JavaScript wrapper but that was never the use case they were aimed towards either in theory or practice. Flash and Java applets also used languages that map much better to JavaScript's execution and memory models than C/C++ do, so the APIs were a big part of what you were getting by going that route (especially in Flash's case, where you had to learn a totally different programming language just for Flash). Unless you consider people who using things like Node.js or Electron to be "insecure about touching C/C++" I don't see where you get off saying that about people who want to use WASM. Sometimes you have existing code or expertise in a certain language, or it simply fits your problem better.

austincheney 9y ago
> Nobody was claiming that WASM would replace JavaScript in general, magically or otherwise. That is literally what I have heard directly on here and Reddit numerous times. > Unless you consider people who using things like Node.js or Electron to be "insecure about touching C/C++" I don't see where you get off saying that about people who want to use WASM. I am not saying that about WASM. I am saying that about the people who obsessively NEED for WASM to replace JavaScript and believe this to be a magically solution.
- johncolanduoni 9y ago
  > That is literally what I have heard directly on here and Reddit numerous times. That's great, then post in response to those comments instead of ones focusing on WASM as a new compilation target. Repeatedly.