4 ms·
I expect something equivalent or better to come out of what is happening with WASM in next year or so. So many people are talking about missing the power of VB
by mtkd 9y ago
I expect something equivalent or better to come out of what is happening with WASM in next year or so.
So many people are talking about missing the power of VB, early Delphi, Turbo Pascal etc. and WASM is first tech for a while that looks like it could take that power to the browser.
- HelloNurse 9y agoSure, there's going to be a bloom of compilers of anything to WASM, but what's discussed here is the opposite technology: lean native applications.
- mtkd 9y agoThe reason these post-2005 cross-platform envs have gained no traction is because so many devs won't move away from browser - or even consider alts to a browser exist. Suggesting something not SAAS, PAAS etc. right now in most enterprises won't do much for your career. WASM kind of fixes that - it takes that 90s/00s native speed into the frontend of the moment and makes complex UIs more viable. Any dev with more than 20 years experience shakes their head that it takes WASM to make that happen - but I'm just grateful it is.
- KallDrexx 9y agoLast I looked I could not find a garbage collection solution for wasm, and that seems to be a barrier to entry. I know the mono-team has had some success by porting all of Mono to Wasm but that seems a bit heavy handed just to get VB.Net or C# language to compile down to wasm.
- mtkd 9y agoIt's not a now solution - but from the trajectory you can see where this likely ends. It may even be the case that the current WASM specification does not support everything needed for that to happen. But if you look at the DOM and what Anders Hejlsberg was working on 25+ years ago with early Delphi - you can see a potential real step change from WASM - especially for enterprise tech to bring back some of that VB magic.