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What advantages do you feel WebAssemlby would have vs the current JS as a compile target?

• lenkite 6y ago
  Size and Performance for large web-apps presumably. For example, Figma which is currently wiping Sketch's face on the floor is written in C++ and compiled to WASM. https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/made-with-webassembly-e2115fe7d97c https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/made-with-web...
  • fulafel 6y ago
    Wasm was designed for C/C++ and pretty hostile toward dynamic GC languages. Clojure is very different from C++ and can leverage JSVM GC and dynamic dispatch system, which are a lot of code and highly optimized. Even disregarding the perf problems the scale of implementation effort and resulting wasm code size would be prohibitive. Not to mention losing easy low friction interop with JS ecosystem libraries.
    • lenkite 6y ago
      It's only a matter of time before we have WASM ecosystem libraries - modules that can be loaded like JS modules. https://webassembly.org/roadmap/ https://webassembly.org/roadmap/ Moreover an immutable language like Clojure doesn't necessarily need an GC - one could probably leverage ARC to great effect. I don't think JS will rule the roost a decade from now. It's simply too slow and most folks actively dislike the ecosystem of NPM hell.
      • fulafel 6y ago
        For that track of thought - There are some more static nascent Clojure inspired languages around that might fit. Eg this one, doesn't have GC either: https://github.com/carp-lang/Carp https://github.com/carp-lang/Carp