4 ms·

I don't think that's absurd at all. WebASM really should be the ASM of the web, everything should be compiled to it. A little pre-compilation of JS to WebASM ma

I don't think that's absurd at all. WebASM really should be the ASM of the web, everything should be compiled to it. A little pre-compilation of JS to WebASM makes sense to me

sjrd 9y ago
See my answer here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16169705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16169705
white-flame 9y ago
As far as not making sense goes, sorry but your post doesn't make any to me, either. Why would we possibly return to a manual memory management, raw pointer oriented, assembly language level of abstraction from the much richer and safer abstraction that JS already has? Wasm doesn't even have any notion of Characters or Strings! You really want to return to the days of each project having their own String libraries, because it's all built on top of raw asm? Webasm is not for JS-style code! You can't have "a little pre-compilation of JS to WebASM", that makes zero sense. We already have the incredibly complex JIT compilation of JS to x64/ARM/etc, which necessarily interacts with the garbage collector, type system, permissions & security, browser debugging/profiling tools, etc, all of which wasm does not have any notion. Wasm is a raw C-ish sandbox environment for cross-compilation of static languages to expose their behavior to javascript, for straight-line CPU performance in number crunching as in games, software rendering, numerical analysis, compression/decompression, etc.
- felipellrocha 9y ago
  You don't really write wasm by hand. You use a higher level language that compiles to it. I wouldn't mind using go for the web, for example, if I wanted more performance, and it takes care of all the concerns you mentioned above for you...
- hateduser2 9y ago
  They’re adding all those things to wasm. I think you’re mistaken about the future.
  - testvox 9y ago
    Can you point me to plans around standardized string encodings in webassembly that is an interesting feature.
- rmrfrmrf 9y ago
  > Why would we possibly return to a manual memory management, raw pointer oriented, assembly language level of abstraction from the much richer and safer abstraction that JS already has? Just wait until the JVM and Flash Runtime are ported to wasm. Downloaded and compiled on every page load :).
  - krapp 9y ago
    >Just wait until the JVM and Flash Runtime are ported to wasm. Downloaded and compiled on every page load :). Why that, instead of caching common components like any other web asset, or even having the browser act as a dependency manager? There are bound to better solutions than "download and compile on every page load."
    - adrianN 9y ago
      Users could for example install plugins into their browser.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Slow and steady. :) http://www.teavm.org/ http://www.teavm.org/ https://github.com/JasonHuang3D/AJC-Flash-WebAssembly-Examples https://github.com/JasonHuang3D/AJC-Flash-WebAssembly-Exampl... http://www.mono-project.com/news/2018/01/16/mono-static-webassembly-compilation/ http://www.mono-project.com/news/2018/01/16/mono-static-weba...
- xg15 9y ago
  > You really want to return to the days of each project having their own String libraries, because it's all built on top of raw asm? If C++-to-WASM via clang catches on, I think this is exactly what will happen.

I don't think that's absurd at all. WebASM really should be the ASM of the web, everything should be compiled to it. A little pre-compilation of JS to WebASM makes sense to me

sjrd 9y ago

See my answer here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16169705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16169705

white-flame 9y ago

As far as not making sense goes, sorry but your post doesn't make any to me, either. Why would we possibly return to a manual memory management, raw pointer oriented, assembly language level of abstraction from the much richer and safer abstraction that JS already has? Wasm doesn't even have any notion of Characters or Strings! You really want to return to the days of each project having their own String libraries, because it's all built on top of raw asm? Webasm is not for JS-style code! You can't have "a little pre-compilation of JS to WebASM", that makes zero sense. We already have the incredibly complex JIT compilation of JS to x64/ARM/etc, which necessarily interacts with the garbage collector, type system, permissions & security, browser debugging/profiling tools, etc, all of which wasm does not have any notion. Wasm is a raw C-ish sandbox environment for cross-compilation of static languages to expose their behavior to javascript, for straight-line CPU performance in number crunching as in games, software rendering, numerical analysis, compression/decompression, etc.

felipellrocha 9y ago
You don't really write wasm by hand. You use a higher level language that compiles to it. I wouldn't mind using go for the web, for example, if I wanted more performance, and it takes care of all the concerns you mentioned above for you...
hateduser2 9y ago
They’re adding all those things to wasm. I think you’re mistaken about the future.
- testvox 9y ago
  Can you point me to plans around standardized string encodings in webassembly that is an interesting feature.
rmrfrmrf 9y ago
> Why would we possibly return to a manual memory management, raw pointer oriented, assembly language level of abstraction from the much richer and safer abstraction that JS already has? Just wait until the JVM and Flash Runtime are ported to wasm. Downloaded and compiled on every page load :).
- krapp 9y ago
  >Just wait until the JVM and Flash Runtime are ported to wasm. Downloaded and compiled on every page load :). Why that, instead of caching common components like any other web asset, or even having the browser act as a dependency manager? There are bound to better solutions than "download and compile on every page load."
  - adrianN 9y ago
    Users could for example install plugins into their browser.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Slow and steady. :) http://www.teavm.org/ http://www.teavm.org/ https://github.com/JasonHuang3D/AJC-Flash-WebAssembly-Examples https://github.com/JasonHuang3D/AJC-Flash-WebAssembly-Exampl... http://www.mono-project.com/news/2018/01/16/mono-static-webassembly-compilation/ http://www.mono-project.com/news/2018/01/16/mono-static-weba...
xg15 9y ago
> You really want to return to the days of each project having their own String libraries, because it's all built on top of raw asm? If C++-to-WASM via clang catches on, I think this is exactly what will happen.