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Unpopular opinion: GraalVM is what should have been webassembly. Reasons: * True polyglotism * existing, feature complete implementation * compatibility with t

Unpopular opinion: GraalVM is what should have been webassembly. Reasons: * True polyglotism * existing, feature complete implementation * compatibility with the existing JVM platform, and through polyglotism compatibility with almost any platform/library.

yoklov 7y ago
a single existing implementation is a problem, not a feature for the web platform
- The_rationalist 7y ago
  You can always rewrite a clone if throwing money is your finality.
  - yoklov 7y ago
    Sounds like much more work than implementing a wasm vm+runtime. Besides, isn’t it owned by a company who is notoriously litigious against reimplementations?
wmf 7y ago
WebAssembly exists because there was an incremental path from JS to asm.js to wasm. Better solution are irrelevant unless there's a similar kind of path to them.
sitkack 7y ago
GraalVM has started getting wasm support, so there is still a path forward.
- solarkraft 7y ago
  WASM support as in "you can run stuff you can run in GraalVM on WASM" or as in "you can run WASM on GraalVM"? I assume the latter, which is, frankly, relatively unimpressive. It would have been pretty amazing to be able to run everything available in Graal in the browser - but yep, Graal is not a standard, and I'm not sure it could ever be put into one (because of the insane complexity and implementation effort I suspect in there). Would still have been cool, though, one can dream. WASM will still end up being a pretty universal platform however, with it being everyone's compilation target. A lot like Java, but maybe without some of the mistakes.
c-cube 7y ago
how is Graal more polyglot than wasm?! Does it support low level languages as well? Besides, it's only one implementation (controlled by Oracle) and will probably remain so forever — who would want to risk a lawsuit by reimplementing it, I wonder. wasm is already in all major browsers. It's succeeding where no JVM-based approach ever could.
- Rusky 7y ago
  GraalVM does support low level languages, and that's one of the most impressive things about it. For example, TruffleRuby runs both Ruby and its associated C extensions on it, bringing major performance improvements due to sharing an optimizer.
- wbl 7y ago
  Graal is licensed under the GPLv2. It's free software!
  - mkj 7y ago
    Is there any patent grant to go with it?
  - toast0 7y ago
    GPLv2 isn't free enough to be used in a commercial browser.
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      Which is why BSD has been such a commercial success and now rules the UNIX clones.
    - Ace17 7y ago
      Nitpick: I assume you meant "GPLv2 isn't free enough to be used in a proprietary browser".
Rusky 7y ago
GraalVM doesn't solve the same problems as WebAssembly- it has no stable, portable format for those polyglot program definitions. GraalVM is certainly something you could use as part of a WebAssembly implementation, though.

yoklov 7y ago

a single existing implementation is a problem, not a feature for the web platform

The_rationalist 7y ago
You can always rewrite a clone if throwing money is your finality.
- yoklov 7y ago
  Sounds like much more work than implementing a wasm vm+runtime. Besides, isn’t it owned by a company who is notoriously litigious against reimplementations?

wmf 7y ago

WebAssembly exists because there was an incremental path from JS to asm.js to wasm. Better solution are irrelevant unless there's a similar kind of path to them.

sitkack 7y ago

GraalVM has started getting wasm support, so there is still a path forward.

solarkraft 7y ago
WASM support as in "you can run stuff you can run in GraalVM on WASM" or as in "you can run WASM on GraalVM"? I assume the latter, which is, frankly, relatively unimpressive. It would have been pretty amazing to be able to run everything available in Graal in the browser - but yep, Graal is not a standard, and I'm not sure it could ever be put into one (because of the insane complexity and implementation effort I suspect in there). Would still have been cool, though, one can dream. WASM will still end up being a pretty universal platform however, with it being everyone's compilation target. A lot like Java, but maybe without some of the mistakes.

c-cube 7y ago

how is Graal more polyglot than wasm?! Does it support low level languages as well? Besides, it's only one implementation (controlled by Oracle) and will probably remain so forever — who would want to risk a lawsuit by reimplementing it, I wonder. wasm is already in all major browsers. It's succeeding where no JVM-based approach ever could.

Rusky 7y ago
GraalVM does support low level languages, and that's one of the most impressive things about it. For example, TruffleRuby runs both Ruby and its associated C extensions on it, bringing major performance improvements due to sharing an optimizer.
wbl 7y ago
Graal is licensed under the GPLv2. It's free software!
- mkj 7y ago
  Is there any patent grant to go with it?
- toast0 7y ago
  GPLv2 isn't free enough to be used in a commercial browser.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Which is why BSD has been such a commercial success and now rules the UNIX clones.
  - Ace17 7y ago
    Nitpick: I assume you meant "GPLv2 isn't free enough to be used in a proprietary browser".

Rusky 7y ago

GraalVM doesn't solve the same problems as WebAssembly- it has no stable, portable format for those polyglot program definitions. GraalVM is certainly something you could use as part of a WebAssembly implementation, though.