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> WASM - which is similar to the LLVM-IR.. but more crossplatform-y.. I think? (can someone confirm?) Yes. > So I guess going forwards WASM is the new crosspl
by tom_mellior 9y ago
> WASM - which is similar to the LLVM-IR.. but more crossplatform-y.. I think? (can someone confirm?)
Yes.
> So I guess going forwards WASM is the new crossplatform bytecode and not necessarily tied to the web - right?
Yes. Andreas Rossberg and other chief WASM people are touring conferences with talks called more or less "WebAssembly: Neither Web nor Assembly". It's a misnomer.
> I don't really get if WASM has memory-managment / garbage-collection by default
It doesn't. I'm not up to date, but last I heard the best that was offered was "at some point there will be APIs available for calling into the browser's runtime to get GC'd objects" or something like that.
- geokon 9y agoGotcha. After reading a bit more it sounds like WASM isn't supposed to really be the common target for all "web-languages". ie. Javascript won't be compiling to WASM any time soon. It's just a parallel mechanism to run code in the browser that's more extendable/flexible (b/c people where writing monsters to have their language compile to Javascript/asm.js)
- tom_mellior 9y agoI think it's a bit of both, and maybe more. For one thing, I think there are historical ties to asm.js (i.e., some of the same people went on to develop WASM), and asm.js should compile nicely to WASM. Once they have GC figured out. For another thing, I think there is the long-term goal of using WASM as a way to migrate away from JavaScript, if desired. Once you can compile all (or most) of your JavaScript logic to WASM, you can start transparently replacing parts of that code with code written in other languages that compile to WASM. If the interfaces remain unchanged, the remaining JavaScript won't notice.