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> Sure, the major frameworks may move to wasm under the hood, but the users of the library will still likely be coding in ES6. We will probably see a lot of API

> Sure, the major frameworks may move to wasm under the hood, but the users of the library will still likely be coding in ES6. We will probably see a lot of APIs where the backend is implemented in wasm with a friendly, scriptable frontend in typical ES6. Why? If WASM has access to the DOM, and it's competitive in terms of performance - why would JS still by the goto? At that point, people will just choose whatever language they want, I don't see JS having an advantage there any longer. Especially since many people don't want to use JS to begin with, but have been forced to. > That said, I’m actually skeptical wasm will ever find much of a use case with the DOM. The browser itself is already heavily optimized for working with the DOM, so wasm is unlikely to be competitive in speed except for specific use cases. I'll be sad if that is true. Though, I'd even be willing to take minor performance hits to use the languages/etc I want. How much of a hit I'd be willing to take would really depend on the application needs, of course.

realusername 9y ago
> Why? If WASM has access to the DOM, and it's competitive in terms of performance - why would JS still by the goto? At that point, people will just choose whatever language they want, I don't see JS having an advantage there any longer. Because of the built-in garbage collector, only non-garbage collector languages will actually be faster on WASM (so not that many of them) and the JS ecosystem is already so big that you would need a lot of work to match it in its current state.
- goatlover 9y ago
  But it seems so far WASM mainly uses the canvas to draw it's own UI, which you might want from a heavy duty application like the Adobe products.
bryanlarsen 9y ago
"why would JS still by the goto" Because that's where the libraries are. In most cases, a language's ecosystem is far more important than the language itself. We seem to get the next great front-end framework every couple years. Maybe the next great one will be in a language other than Javascript and at that point we'll start to see a significant language shift.
scottmf 9y ago
Many of us do want to use JS. The language has evolved a lot over the past few years and people love it. Client-side JavaScript isn't going anywhere. Look how popular Node is despite all the alternatives.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Bulb effect.
- notheguyouthink 9y ago
  > Many of us do want to use JS. The language has evolved a lot over the past few years and people love it. No one _(with any sense)_ thinks JS is somehow going to be deleted. Nor am I saying JS is going anywhere - if anything, I'm not even talking about JS, I'm not sure why you pointed out that JS is going to exist afterwards. Do I misunderstand your point? > Client-side JavaScript isn't going anywhere. Look how popular Node is despite all the alternatives. Well to be clear, there isn't alternatives, if the user wants a shared tooling, shared libraries, shared language. I don't think Node became popular years ago because JavaScript is so wooping awesome. Hell, when NodeJS came out transpilers (CoffeeScript/etc) were massively popular because of how much many people hated JavaScript. Node was popular despite many peoples dislike for the language. I worked for ~4 years at a company who built an entire platform in CoffeeScript, as did a few other companies we worked with. That's not to say that JavaScript is terrible, ES6+ is becoming really nice. I'm just saying, Node's popularity is clearly not evidence of JavaScript being awesome. Node is a symptom of people wanting a singular environment, and not having any choice about JavaScript.
  - scottmf 9y ago
    Perhaps I misunderstood your point. You seemed to ask why people would want to use JS once WASM effectively puts it on a level playing field with other languages.
    - notheguyouthink 9y ago
      Ah nah, I meant more like - if you wanted to, why wouldn't you. Not that anything is explicitly better than anything else. It sounded like people were claiming that WASM cannot dethrone JS, that JS will always be the language of the web, etcetc. So my question was more.. Why? Personally I don't think it is (clearly haha). Once DOM access is reasonable, I think many (myself included) will move away quickly. Web frameworks are not that hard, so the existing ecosystem of languages is a bit of a meaningless argument as I see it. Hell, even within JS, the ecosystem is largely isolated solos of code. Eg, sure I can choose between React, Angular, Ember, etcetc - but I wouldn't choose two of them at the same time. The ecosystem in that case only helps me in that I can choose, but they're rarely tools I collectively use. So back to my original point, myself, and I imagine my shop, would make the switch pretty quickly as soon as WASM is viable for our target languages. Viable means page load execution, memory, speed, etc - all variable parameters depending on the project of course.

realusername 9y ago

> Why? If WASM has access to the DOM, and it's competitive in terms of performance - why would JS still by the goto? At that point, people will just choose whatever language they want, I don't see JS having an advantage there any longer. Because of the built-in garbage collector, only non-garbage collector languages will actually be faster on WASM (so not that many of them) and the JS ecosystem is already so big that you would need a lot of work to match it in its current state.

goatlover 9y ago
But it seems so far WASM mainly uses the canvas to draw it's own UI, which you might want from a heavy duty application like the Adobe products.

bryanlarsen 9y ago

"why would JS still by the goto" Because that's where the libraries are. In most cases, a language's ecosystem is far more important than the language itself. We seem to get the next great front-end framework every couple years. Maybe the next great one will be in a language other than Javascript and at that point we'll start to see a significant language shift.

scottmf 9y ago

Many of us do want to use JS. The language has evolved a lot over the past few years and people love it. Client-side JavaScript isn't going anywhere. Look how popular Node is despite all the alternatives.

pjmlp 9y ago
Bulb effect.
notheguyouthink 9y ago
> Many of us do want to use JS. The language has evolved a lot over the past few years and people love it. No one _(with any sense)_ thinks JS is somehow going to be deleted. Nor am I saying JS is going anywhere - if anything, I'm not even talking about JS, I'm not sure why you pointed out that JS is going to exist afterwards. Do I misunderstand your point? > Client-side JavaScript isn't going anywhere. Look how popular Node is despite all the alternatives. Well to be clear, there isn't alternatives, if the user wants a shared tooling, shared libraries, shared language. I don't think Node became popular years ago because JavaScript is so wooping awesome. Hell, when NodeJS came out transpilers (CoffeeScript/etc) were massively popular because of how much many people hated JavaScript. Node was popular despite many peoples dislike for the language. I worked for ~4 years at a company who built an entire platform in CoffeeScript, as did a few other companies we worked with. That's not to say that JavaScript is terrible, ES6+ is becoming really nice. I'm just saying, Node's popularity is clearly not evidence of JavaScript being awesome. Node is a symptom of people wanting a singular environment, and not having any choice about JavaScript.
- scottmf 9y ago
  Perhaps I misunderstood your point. You seemed to ask why people would want to use JS once WASM effectively puts it on a level playing field with other languages.
  - notheguyouthink 9y ago
    Ah nah, I meant more like - if you wanted to, why wouldn't you. Not that anything is explicitly better than anything else. It sounded like people were claiming that WASM cannot dethrone JS, that JS will always be the language of the web, etcetc. So my question was more.. Why? Personally I don't think it is (clearly haha). Once DOM access is reasonable, I think many (myself included) will move away quickly. Web frameworks are not that hard, so the existing ecosystem of languages is a bit of a meaningless argument as I see it. Hell, even within JS, the ecosystem is largely isolated solos of code. Eg, sure I can choose between React, Angular, Ember, etcetc - but I wouldn't choose two of them at the same time. The ecosystem in that case only helps me in that I can choose, but they're rarely tools I collectively use. So back to my original point, myself, and I imagine my shop, would make the switch pretty quickly as soon as WASM is viable for our target languages. Viable means page load execution, memory, speed, etc - all variable parameters depending on the project of course.