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I think "native" web-tech like JavaScript & HTML will still have a lot of momentum in it. WASM is about other languages getting access to browser as a delivery
by galaxyLogic 7y ago
I think "native" web-tech like JavaScript & HTML will still have a lot of momentum in it. WASM is about other languages getting access to browser as a delivery platform. I wonder if language JavaScript that was originally designed to run on the web should have a competitive edge here?
The drawback of JavaScript has so far been its low execution speed, maybe WASM will make it run faster.
In other words maybe WASM will not be the downfall of JavaScript but its uplift.
- sunseb 7y agoAbsolutely, have a look at that: https://assemblyscript.org https://assemblyscript.org
- galaxyLogic 7y agoCool. And Types too!
- shantly 7y agoIt seems to me that, given the incredible number of person-years put into making Javascript fast, it's probably approaching its max speed of execution already without modifying the language itself. I'd expect the C/C++ interpreters are already using so many tricks to speed it up that remaining gains would be difficult without adding more information to the language itself (e.g. stricter typing) or modifying the way it works (fewer things represented as objects, more types of collections). In short, I suspect the actual instructions executed when JS runs on a modern interpreter are already pretty damn close to what a fairly well-optimized JS-to-WASM compiler would provide. If you want more major gains I think you'd have to start looking at locking down (or at least providing the option to lock down, in performance-critical code) the ability of Javascript to do all kinds of wacky stuff at runtime.