4 ms·
we have wasm now. why is anybody writing anything in javascript ever nowadays? some form of religious self chastisement?
by mortdeus 8y ago
we have wasm now. why is anybody writing anything in javascript ever nowadays? some form of religious self chastisement?
- krapp 8y agowasm isn't quite ready yet. It requires a javascript layer for interacting with the DOM, which is slower than plain javascript, and it doesn't support features like garbage collection which would make it a good target for some languages. Also, javascript is plaintext and doesn't require a compile step, even though for some reason (cough Node) javascript development usually does, which makes it much more convenient for its original intended use case (a scripting language for the web) than wasm.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoDoesn't compiling a non-JS language into WASM require compiling a fat language runtime as well? That would put the output in couple-dozen-megabytes category.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> Doesn't compiling a non-JS language into WASM require compiling a fat language runtime as well? Not necessarily. For a language with a large runtime that is either irreducibly large (perhaps because you need to support unrestricted eval) or for which you don't wish to spend the effort to allow your build toolchain to bundle only as much as your program actually uses, sure.
- MrL567 8y agoSome of us don't want to use a C/C++ inspired language for web development when there is a simpler solution offered.
- always_good 8y agoIt's funny how everyone damns web technology for changing too fast. But now that wasm is slightly available, the same people wonder why it's not self-evident that everyone should've jumped ship immediately to such fledgling tech that isn't even a drop-in replacement for Javascript.
- regularfry 8y agoBecause we have to support IE 11.