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Being agnostic is a good goal, but being useful is more important. Hopefully they get it right, because the JS ecosystem is a bloated mess that we've been stuc

Being agnostic is a good goal, but being useful is more important. Hopefully they get it right, because the JS ecosystem is a bloated mess that we've been stuck with because there's no other game in town.

raxxorrax 8y ago
I believe we would miss it dearly if wasm gains significant traction. I wouldn't like running closed binaries with monolithic architectures through my browser. Maybe for a few selected high performance applications. Not because the security aspect but I think it will be detrimental to an open web. Maybe not, we'll see. edit: I don't really understand people that are not horrified by the thought of replacing general javascript code with one that is written in c/c++... Because string operations are awesome in these languages, right?!
- krapp 8y ago
  The point of webassembly isn't to replace general javascript code but to be a better compile target for C/C++ etc than javascript, and to optimize performance critical parts of javascript when necessary. Plenty of people want it to be a complete replacement for javascript, but I don't see that happening. I certainly don't think the doomsday scenarios that sometimes get mentioned whereby the entire web becomes nothing but closed, DRM ridden WASM binaries is likely. Large corporate owned sites and streaming services will almost certainly leverage it as much as possible, though. "closed binaries in the browser" have existed since the days of Java applets and Flash. And no one is stopping anyone from providing or distributing the source for their webassembly modules, so I don't see webassembly as being any less free in that regard than any other language that compiles to a binary. Arguably, webassembly is more free because it isn't owned by a company or restricted to a single language.
  - raxxorrax 8y ago
    > have existed since the days of Java applets and Flash. That it what I was thinking about and it is something I wouldn't want to get back to. And having javascript as compile target would net you a more readable and therefore more open code. Painful process, sure. But yeah, for specialized application webassembly could very well be worth it. Javascript and C for example are like completely distinct circles of friends and you don't necessarily want them to meet each other.

raxxorrax 8y ago

I believe we would miss it dearly if wasm gains significant traction. I wouldn't like running closed binaries with monolithic architectures through my browser. Maybe for a few selected high performance applications. Not because the security aspect but I think it will be detrimental to an open web. Maybe not, we'll see. edit: I don't really understand people that are not horrified by the thought of replacing general javascript code with one that is written in c/c++... Because string operations are awesome in these languages, right?!

krapp 8y ago
The point of webassembly isn't to replace general javascript code but to be a better compile target for C/C++ etc than javascript, and to optimize performance critical parts of javascript when necessary. Plenty of people want it to be a complete replacement for javascript, but I don't see that happening. I certainly don't think the doomsday scenarios that sometimes get mentioned whereby the entire web becomes nothing but closed, DRM ridden WASM binaries is likely. Large corporate owned sites and streaming services will almost certainly leverage it as much as possible, though. "closed binaries in the browser" have existed since the days of Java applets and Flash. And no one is stopping anyone from providing or distributing the source for their webassembly modules, so I don't see webassembly as being any less free in that regard than any other language that compiles to a binary. Arguably, webassembly is more free because it isn't owned by a company or restricted to a single language.
- raxxorrax 8y ago
  > have existed since the days of Java applets and Flash. That it what I was thinking about and it is something I wouldn't want to get back to. And having javascript as compile target would net you a more readable and therefore more open code. Painful process, sure. But yeah, for specialized application webassembly could very well be worth it. Javascript and C for example are like completely distinct circles of friends and you don't necessarily want them to meet each other.