4 ms·

Genuinely ignorant question, what's the difference with C from this perspective? I thought the whole point of C was to be a common language.

kodablah 8y ago
Nasal demons
naasking 8y ago
Binary compatibility across architectures, no undefined behaviours are the primary ones.
- quickben 8y ago
  Yes of course, here is an example of a well defined, no ub, == overloads. https://slikts.github.io/js-equality-game/ https://slikts.github.io/js-equality-game/ It is all bound to make JS kernel programing a Pilar of OS Stability.
  - kanox 8y ago
    Does that apply to web assembly?
  - tomjakubowski 8y ago
    None of that applies to web assembly, as I'm sure you know.
  - rictic 8y ago
    You're confusing JS with wasm and undefined behavior with confusing behavior. JS and wasm are strongly defined and the specifications consider undefined behavior a bug.
kettlecorn 8y ago
C has to be recompiled per platform. The advantage to something like using WebAssembly is you could write a program in C, compile it to WebAssembly, and then it could be run on anything that supports WebAssembly. This could enable a future where you write one program that can run in a web browser, as a phone app, as a desktop program. All with only tweaking the UI. Additionally the divide between a “web app” and a desktop app from a user perspective increasingly comes down to: do I need this to run fast (as a native program), or do I want it to be convenient to use (as a web app)? WebAssembly may very well become fast enough that it is fast and convenient for all but the absolute most demanding of applications.
akiselev 8y ago
WebAssembly's closest analog would be LLVM's IR, which many compilers like clang (for C/C++) or rustc output so that they can use LLVM's existing codegen. In WebAsm's case, however, the backend would be the different browsers and their sandboxes. The C ABI describes a common calling convention and a few other details to allow different compilers to use each other's binaries, but C is hardly a common language in the way WebAssembly is meant to be.

kodablah 8y ago

Nasal demons

naasking 8y ago

Binary compatibility across architectures, no undefined behaviours are the primary ones.

quickben 8y ago
Yes of course, here is an example of a well defined, no ub, == overloads. https://slikts.github.io/js-equality-game/ https://slikts.github.io/js-equality-game/ It is all bound to make JS kernel programing a Pilar of OS Stability.
- kanox 8y ago
  Does that apply to web assembly?
- tomjakubowski 8y ago
  None of that applies to web assembly, as I'm sure you know.
- rictic 8y ago
  You're confusing JS with wasm and undefined behavior with confusing behavior. JS and wasm are strongly defined and the specifications consider undefined behavior a bug.

kettlecorn 8y ago

C has to be recompiled per platform. The advantage to something like using WebAssembly is you could write a program in C, compile it to WebAssembly, and then it could be run on anything that supports WebAssembly. This could enable a future where you write one program that can run in a web browser, as a phone app, as a desktop program. All with only tweaking the UI. Additionally the divide between a “web app” and a desktop app from a user perspective increasingly comes down to: do I need this to run fast (as a native program), or do I want it to be convenient to use (as a web app)? WebAssembly may very well become fast enough that it is fast and convenient for all but the absolute most demanding of applications.

akiselev 8y ago

WebAssembly's closest analog would be LLVM's IR, which many compilers like clang (for C/C++) or rustc output so that they can use LLVM's existing codegen. In WebAsm's case, however, the backend would be the different browsers and their sandboxes. The C ABI describes a common calling convention and a few other details to allow different compilers to use each other's binaries, but C is hardly a common language in the way WebAssembly is meant to be.