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I'm under the impression that you can run pretty much anything in web assembly, which is like a whole tiramisu of abstraction above the hardware. Not sure how m

I'm under the impression that you can run pretty much anything in web assembly, which is like a whole tiramisu of abstraction above the hardware. Not sure how many more cycles that ads but I bet it's quite a few. Is it possible that we're inventing all this encapsulation because we think we can escape an ugly truth at a higher layer? Is it possible that we're wrong about that?

timdaub 6y ago
Yes and no. WebAssembly itself has no IO except for its linear memory. So many programs will then have to have a component in a system-native language (e.g. to write files). So technically I'm not sure how much you can abstract away for performance.
3pt14159 6y ago
It's about security and ease. If it were secure to install arbitrary code on a computer, we'd have more apps. If it were easy to compile across platforms and handle every weird OS call, we'd have way, way more apps. Browsers are essentially a translation layer with some security guarantees and even there, on both counts they aren't perfect. They're merely better than the alternative. If you ever want to disrupt the entire industry, make something that is easier to code for and more secure than a web browser. If it's faster too, then that's gravy.