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In my view, it comes down to a few questions, the most important of which is: What new capabilities does WASM afford us? I by no means think JS is beyond crit
by verletx64 8y ago
In my view, it comes down to a few questions, the most important of which is:
What new capabilities does WASM afford us?
I by no means think JS is beyond criticism, but much of the excitement about WASM revolves around writing web stuff in other languages. Is that really disruptive?
- krapp 8y agoWeb stuff? Probably not. WASM's greatest value on the web is likely to be optimizing high-performance code. Although people want to use it to replace javascript entirely with the compile-to-WASM toolchain of their choice, the actual utility of that is likely to be minimal. Although in that regard, WASM is objectively better as a compile point than "compiling" to javascript. Having an actual bytecode for the web that isn't proprietary or tied to a single language is better, if not necessarily disruptive. What, to me, is potentially disruptive about WASM is the potential it offers for archiving, distributing and running "native" software over the web, or if and when thin native clients become available, eliminating the distinction entirely and having a universal, OS agnostic software distribution and installation model based on web caching. Although we've got a way to go with that, and it may be a stupid and terrible idea. But it would be disruptive.