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At the moment I don't think there is a frontend language/framework which compiles to WASM and is actually worth using, at least from a perspective of frontend p

At the moment I don't think there is a frontend language/framework which compiles to WASM and is actually worth using, at least from a perspective of frontend productivity. For performance or porting legacy code, WASM is already useful. I mean, yes, there are things like Blazor or similar things for Rust or Nim, but these aren't yet compelling to me.

steveklabnik 8y ago
What would make it compelling? (I don’t think this is where wasm will be used as much but I’m still interested!)
- bayesian_horse 8y ago
  Something like react or vuejs in Python, with similar performance and equally or more productive. There is something like this for Rust, I think. But Python for the Browser is not compelling unless we both have a faithful implementation of the language and data model and a productive and beautiful frontend framework. Call it a React for Python or a Django for the frontend. Similar goals apply for other languages which have an edge on Javascript in some regard.
  - steveklabnik 8y ago
    Okay yeah, I wasn't sure if you were saying "the frameworks that exist are bad" or "a framework should exist". Thanks. (And yeah, there are several of these in Rust now, but they're extremely early days, and not really ready for anything serious at all.)
  - nicoburns 8y ago
    I doubt we'll see that. Python just isn't that different to JS (so what's the point), and is in any case much slower than JS in all current implementations (so performance parity is unlikely).
    - bayesian_horse 8y ago
      Probably you don't know Python that well, then... Also we don't need performance parity. We just need enough performance for such a framework to not suck. Interpreting Python bytecode in Javascript already doesn't suck that much, compiling bytecode to WASM and then to native machine code would suck even less. And there are always ways to improve the performance of critical parts.

steveklabnik 8y ago

What would make it compelling? (I don’t think this is where wasm will be used as much but I’m still interested!)

bayesian_horse 8y ago
Something like react or vuejs in Python, with similar performance and equally or more productive. There is something like this for Rust, I think. But Python for the Browser is not compelling unless we both have a faithful implementation of the language and data model and a productive and beautiful frontend framework. Call it a React for Python or a Django for the frontend. Similar goals apply for other languages which have an edge on Javascript in some regard.
- steveklabnik 8y ago
  Okay yeah, I wasn't sure if you were saying "the frameworks that exist are bad" or "a framework should exist". Thanks. (And yeah, there are several of these in Rust now, but they're extremely early days, and not really ready for anything serious at all.)
- nicoburns 8y ago
  I doubt we'll see that. Python just isn't that different to JS (so what's the point), and is in any case much slower than JS in all current implementations (so performance parity is unlikely).
  - bayesian_horse 8y ago
    Probably you don't know Python that well, then... Also we don't need performance parity. We just need enough performance for such a framework to not suck. Interpreting Python bytecode in Javascript already doesn't suck that much, compiling bytecode to WASM and then to native machine code would suck even less. And there are always ways to improve the performance of critical parts.