9 ms·

Introduction to WebAssembly Components

100 points by goranmoomin 5y ago

matei_radu 5y ago
Hi, author of the article here. Happy to have a discussion about the WebAssembly component model and current implementations.
- The_rationalist 5y ago
  It's time to admit webassembly is a mistake and that GraalVM is an order of magnitudes superior technology and browser developers shouldn't have to make humanity suffer for eternity because of NIH syndrome and technical mediocrity.
- bno1 5y ago
  I get what components are supposed to do, but how does wasm currently talk with the browser and javascript code? Can it manipulate the DOM and execute asynchronously (like promises) or is it just a black box that receives some data and returns other data synchronously?
  - matei_radu 5y ago
    By default, a WebAssembly module has no access to any host APIs — particularized for the web platform, a running module will have no way of accessing the DOM by default. When instantiating a module, it can use module imports [1], which can be used to access the DOM through JavaScript calls. [1]: https://webassembly.github.io/spec/core/syntax/modules.html#syntax-import https://webassembly.github.io/spec/core/syntax/modules.html#...
- panic 5y ago
  WebAssembly's type system supports just a handful of numeric types and opaque external reference types. How does WIT map its richer type system (which includes things like strings and records) onto these underlying types in a language-agnostic way?
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    I guess they will need to rediscover the Common Language Subset of the Common Language Runtime and re-sell it as an invention.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  So ... the Java model was: * define a VM, but not offer a public direct API * define a language that could be interpreted, compiled or JIT-compiled to the VM * implement the VM so that it could run standalone or in browsers * claim "write once, run anywhere" The WASM model appears to be almost identical, with the addition of: * offer compilation/translation from common existing languages Why should we prefer the WASM/WASI model to Java? Why should we believe it will be more successful? And perhaps more deeply, re-wrapping system APIs (e.g. POSIX) in WASM-specific modules seems incredibly time-inefficient (all those commitees, all that reimplemenation...). What if anything is going to be done to provide WASM/WASI with direct system access (outside the browser) ?
  - panic 5y ago
    If you could Applet.instantiate() as easily as WebAssembly.instantiate() and have Java methods immediately available from JavaScript, I have no doubt that it would be as successful as WASM is. The advantage of WASM is that it’s already integrated with JavaScript VMs in a way that Java never was. Though I suppose it’s possible if someone wants to get V8 running JVM bytecode!
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      So your argument there is "well, I can access WASM from javascript more easily that I could access Java" ? That's it?
      - panic 5y ago
        Yes—in most cases the technology itself doesn’t matter as much as how it can be deployed. The popularity of JavaScript itself is testament to that (though the technology has caught up quite a bit there).
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      Except it actually was, as there was an interop API for applets to interact with DOM and vice-versa.
iamricks 5y ago
I feel like Web Assembly is hard to understand if you don't have a background in systems programming. Coming from web dev what are some good resources to get me to a point where i can better bridge the gap? I just started learning Rust a few days ago (Doing adventofcode in Rust) but i don't really know what path to take to be able to build something useful with Web Assembly
- LeanderK 5y ago
  isn't webassemly just a compile-target? Like JVM-bytecode or real x86 assembly? If so, then you are not really supposed to understand web assembly. Just like x86 assembly it's just what your language, like rust, compiles to. If you want to understand it, then I suppose it's hard unless you have a background in systems programming since it's so low-level. It's the nature of the game and web-dev is quite removed from low-level coding. I don't have an experience with web assembly, it's just how I understood the concept.
  - krona 5y ago
    Webassembly is like a virtual machine without any standard library but permits custom embedders. As you could imagine that makes it limiting and is in part what things like WASI and Webassembly Components are trying to address.
- tyingq 5y ago
  If you're coming from web dev, I would think of it as a "foreign function interface" from javascript. You're calling a function defined in some other language. Here's a function, in WAT format (Web Assembly Text), that returns the number 42: (module (func (result i32) (i32.const 42) ) (export "testfunction" (func 0)) ) Go to https://mbebenita.github.io/WasmExplorer/ https://mbebenita.github.io/WasmExplorer/ and paste that in the middle box, then click assemble, then download, and you'll have a local file called "test.wasm". Then, since you already do web dev, get that test.wasm file and a new page accessible from a local web server. The new page should have this in it: <script> // should log 42 to the console WebAssembly.instantiateStreaming(fetch('https://path/to/test.wasm')).then(prog => { console.log(prog.instance.exports.testfunction()); }); </script> Everything else is facades, layers, and tools on top of that. But that should help clear up what's at the bottom from a web-dev/js perspective. And also what the "2 halves" are. One half being, in your case, that the Rust compiles down eventually to WASM that you host somewhere. The other half being that you need to be able to call into that generated code from your JS.
pjmlp 5y ago
Components in bytecode format with support for C++, where have I seen it? https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/clr https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/clr https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/dotnet/dotnet-programming-with-cpp-cli-visual-cpp?view=msvc-170 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/dotnet/dotnet-programmi...
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  Oh it goes a lot further back than that! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29593432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29593432
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Indeed, very nice overview.
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chaz6 5y ago
I think this could be a massive step forward for computing. Imagine if you will an add-on ecosystem for image editors like Krita or video editors like KdenLive. Add-ons could be distruted as a single package and can be run anywhere regardless of the system architecture or software plugin architecture, even within web applications. Write once, run anywhere.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jcelerier 5y ago
  i've been working on the "C++ API" side of this if you're interested :) - https://github.com/celtera/avendish https://github.com/celtera/avendish - https://ossia.io/posts/reflection/ https://ossia.io/posts/reflection/ coupled with the definition of a common ABI, the holy grail of reusability may start to be closer
  - irq-1 5y ago
    Isn't the memory barrier a huge penalty? (WASM can only access it's own memory, never the hosts.) I've been thinking about how WebAssembly could work server side to host websites, but every step seems to be copy bytes into or out of the VM.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  > Write once, run anywhere Where have I heard this before ....
  - kingcharles 5y ago
    1995 called; it wants its tag line back.
  - chaz6 5y ago
    I did consider making a reference to Java but I decided against it as I thought it would be received in the spirit it was intended.
Asraelite 5y ago
From what I've seen of wit (called "witx" back when I last used it) it seems to be pretty skewed towards using Rust as inspiration for its design, even though it's meant to be language agnostic. The syntax is not far off from being a one-to-one copy of Rust. Some examples: `foo: bar` for type annotations, `->` for return types, `enum { a, b }` for C-style enums, `variant { a(b, c) }` for tagged unions, `type a = b` for type aliases, `_` for placeholder types. Its implementation of WASI even uses `-> expected<_, errno>` for most of its return signatures, imitating Rust's Result. I really like Rust's type system and syntax, and none of these design decisions are bad in their own right, I just get the impression that other language communities are not having enough influence in the design of WebAssembly compared to Rust.
- matei_radu 5y ago
  I think that is a really valid observation, and I would like to point out a couple of things: - the WIT language decisions will end up impacting people writing WIT syntax by hand. I am not sure how large that audience is right now (and I am not dismissing the initial comment), but I really hope we could get good enough tooling that could directly generate WIT (in its eventual binary format) based on annotated source code. - an equally valid observation here is that we need people from multiple programming languages looking at generating _idiomatic bindings_ based on the WIT format, which is what end users will interact with when using components. (Currently there are binding generators for Rust and C/C++, with hopefully Grain following soon enough.)
- dcode 5y ago
  AssemblyScript maintainer here. Can confirm, other language communities have practically zero influence on the design. In fact, AS was present during "specification" and has been completely annihilated for disagreeing with what the chairing majority has come up with there. It's particularly ironic that the Component Model suddenly targets Web integration again, or that this is now coined "language neutral". In relation, the syntax is more of a minor detail.
DonHopkins 5y ago
Earlier I posted an article by Don Box comparing SOM and COM, and I mentioned that WebAssembly is going through a similar evolution, and might benefit from some of the lessons of COM and SOM: COM vs SOM: The Component Object Model and Some Other Model (1999) (archive.org) https://web.archive.org/web/19990127184653/http://www.develop.com/dbox/COM_vs_SOM_Summ.htm https://web.archive.org/web/19990127184653/http://www.develo... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20266450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20266450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20266627 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20266627 >DonHopkins on June 24, 2019 | prev | next [–] >This article comparing SOM and COM was written by Don Box. (first archived in January 1999, but doesn't say when published): The Component Object Model and Some Other Model: A comparison of technologies revisited yet again: https://web.archive.org/web/19990127184653/http://www.develop.com/dbox/COM_vs_SOM_Summ.htm https://web.archive.org/web/19990127184653/http://www.develo... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Object_Model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Object_Model >It was in response to IBM's somewhat misleading article comparing their SOM with Microsoft COM, last updated July 1994: >The System Object Model (SOM) and the Component Object Model (COM): A comparison of technologies summarized https://web.archive.org/web/19990117055950/http://www.developer.ibm.com/library/ref/SOM_vs_COM_Summ.html https://web.archive.org/web/19990117055950/http://www.develo... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System_Object_Model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System_Object_Model >Don Box wrote an excellent in-depth book about COM: "Essential COM": "Nobody explains COM better than Don Box" -Charlie Kindel, COM Guy, Microsoft Corporation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Box https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Box https://archive.org/details/essentialcom00boxd https://archive.org/details/essentialcom00boxd >Unfortunately COM had the most un-googlable name possible (even before there was a Google), so Microsoft renamed it ActiveX. >For more comtext, here are some notes I wrote about Win32, COM, OLE, OLE Controls, and ActiveX in 1996: https://donhopkins.com/home/interval/pluggers/win32.html https://donhopkins.com/home/interval/pluggers/win32.html https://donhopkins.com/home/interval/pluggers/com.html https://donhopkins.com/home/interval/pluggers/com.html https://donhopkins.com/home/interval/pluggers/ole.html https://donhopkins.com/home/interval/pluggers/ole.html https://donhopkins.com/home/interval/pluggers/olecontrols.html https://donhopkins.com/home/interval/pluggers/olecontrols.ht... https://donhopkins.com/home/interval/pluggers/activex.html https://donhopkins.com/home/interval/pluggers/activex.html >Here's a synopsis of COM I wrote in response to "Can someone link to a synopsis describing what "COM" is? It's hard to search for. (e.g. microsoft com visual studio)": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12975257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12975257 >Don't get me wrong: I'm not advocating everybody jump on the COM bandwagon! I just think it's interesting and useful to know where it came from, how it evolved, what different layers were built on top of it, and how it compared to the alternatives at the time it was designed. And it's still pretty widely used, and will probably never go away. >It certainly had a lot of problems and limitations, and OLE/ActiveX/DCOM/DirectX/etc took it way too far, then Mozilla XP/COM cloned it and also took it way too far (and then back again: see "decomification" and "decomtamination"), but it really was a pretty elegant and successful solution to the problems it was designed to address at the time. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Gecko:DeCOMtamination https://wiki.mozilla.org/Gecko:DeCOMtamination https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12968830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12968830 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=specific&order=relevance+desc&bug_status=__all__&product=&content=decomify&comments=0&comments=1 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=specif... >It's always good to study history to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past! >WebAssembly is going through a similar evolution, and might benefit from some of the lessons of COM and SOM. Also, here's a description of the origins of COM that I posted earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12975257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12975257 >Glad you asked! One of my favorite topics. ;) >COM is essentially a formal way of using C++ vtables [1] from C and other languages, so you can create and consume components in any language, and call back and forth between them. It's a way of expressing a rational subset of how C++ classes work and format in memory, in a way that can be implemented in other languages. >It was the outcome of the C / C++ / Visual Basic language wars at Microsoft. >[...] Also some stuff about Netscape's Internet Foundation Classes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19837817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19837817 >Wow, a blast from the past! 1996, what a year that was. >Sun was freaking out about Microsoft, and announced Java Beans as their vaporware "alternative" to ActiveX. JavaScript had just come onto the scene, then Netscape announced they were going to reimplement Navigator in Java, so they dove into the deep end and came up with IFC, which designed by NeXTStep programmers. A bunch of the original Java team left Sun and formed Marima, and developed the Castanet network push distribution system, and the Bongo user interface editor (like HyperCard for Java, calling the Java compiler incrementally to support dynamic script editing). >[...] There was also a previous discussion about Mozilla's WebAsembly System Interface: Mozilla announces WebAssembly System Interface, what JVM should have been (theregister.co.uk): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19716179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19716179 https://www.theregister.com/2019/03/29/mozilla_wasi_spec/ https://www.theregister.com/2019/03/29/mozilla_wasi_spec/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19717416 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19717416 >DonHopkins on April 22, 2019 | parent | context | favorite | on: Mozilla announces WebAssembly System Interface, wh... >>"WebAssembly has been designed to scale from tiny devices to large server farms or CDNs..." What's ironic is that the "tiny devices" and even "high end professional desktop workstation and server devices" that Java was originally designed to run on when it was started in 1990 were MUCH tinier than the devices considered "tiny" today. >How many more times faster is a typical smartphone today (Raspberry Pi 3: 2,451 MIPS, ARM Cortex A73: 71,120 MIPS) that a 1990 SparcStation 2 pizzabox (28.5 MIPS, $15,000-$27,000)? http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Instructions_per_second http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Instructions_per_second

100 points by goranmoomin 5y ago

Hi, author of the article here. Happy to have a discussion about the WebAssembly component model and current implementations.

The_rationalist 5y ago
It's time to admit webassembly is a mistake and that GraalVM is an order of magnitudes superior technology and browser developers shouldn't have to make humanity suffer for eternity because of NIH syndrome and technical mediocrity.
bno1 5y ago
I get what components are supposed to do, but how does wasm currently talk with the browser and javascript code? Can it manipulate the DOM and execute asynchronously (like promises) or is it just a black box that receives some data and returns other data synchronously?
- matei_radu 5y ago
  By default, a WebAssembly module has no access to any host APIs — particularized for the web platform, a running module will have no way of accessing the DOM by default. When instantiating a module, it can use module imports [1], which can be used to access the DOM through JavaScript calls. [1]: https://webassembly.github.io/spec/core/syntax/modules.html#syntax-import https://webassembly.github.io/spec/core/syntax/modules.html#...
panic 5y ago
WebAssembly's type system supports just a handful of numeric types and opaque external reference types. How does WIT map its richer type system (which includes things like strings and records) onto these underlying types in a language-agnostic way?
- pjmlp 5y ago
  I guess they will need to rediscover the Common Language Subset of the Common Language Runtime and re-sell it as an invention.
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
So ... the Java model was: * define a VM, but not offer a public direct API * define a language that could be interpreted, compiled or JIT-compiled to the VM * implement the VM so that it could run standalone or in browsers * claim "write once, run anywhere" The WASM model appears to be almost identical, with the addition of: * offer compilation/translation from common existing languages Why should we prefer the WASM/WASI model to Java? Why should we believe it will be more successful? And perhaps more deeply, re-wrapping system APIs (e.g. POSIX) in WASM-specific modules seems incredibly time-inefficient (all those commitees, all that reimplemenation...). What if anything is going to be done to provide WASM/WASI with direct system access (outside the browser) ?
- panic 5y ago
  If you could Applet.instantiate() as easily as WebAssembly.instantiate() and have Java methods immediately available from JavaScript, I have no doubt that it would be as successful as WASM is. The advantage of WASM is that it’s already integrated with JavaScript VMs in a way that Java never was. Though I suppose it’s possible if someone wants to get V8 running JVM bytecode!
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    So your argument there is "well, I can access WASM from javascript more easily that I could access Java" ? That's it?
    - panic 5y ago
      Yes—in most cases the technology itself doesn’t matter as much as how it can be deployed. The popularity of JavaScript itself is testament to that (though the technology has caught up quite a bit there).
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Except it actually was, as there was an interop API for applets to interact with DOM and vice-versa.

iamricks 5y ago

I feel like Web Assembly is hard to understand if you don't have a background in systems programming. Coming from web dev what are some good resources to get me to a point where i can better bridge the gap? I just started learning Rust a few days ago (Doing adventofcode in Rust) but i don't really know what path to take to be able to build something useful with Web Assembly

LeanderK 5y ago
isn't webassemly just a compile-target? Like JVM-bytecode or real x86 assembly? If so, then you are not really supposed to understand web assembly. Just like x86 assembly it's just what your language, like rust, compiles to. If you want to understand it, then I suppose it's hard unless you have a background in systems programming since it's so low-level. It's the nature of the game and web-dev is quite removed from low-level coding. I don't have an experience with web assembly, it's just how I understood the concept.
- krona 5y ago
  Webassembly is like a virtual machine without any standard library but permits custom embedders. As you could imagine that makes it limiting and is in part what things like WASI and Webassembly Components are trying to address.
tyingq 5y ago
If you're coming from web dev, I would think of it as a "foreign function interface" from javascript. You're calling a function defined in some other language. Here's a function, in WAT format (Web Assembly Text), that returns the number 42: (module (func (result i32) (i32.const 42) ) (export "testfunction" (func 0)) ) Go to https://mbebenita.github.io/WasmExplorer/ https://mbebenita.github.io/WasmExplorer/ and paste that in the middle box, then click assemble, then download, and you'll have a local file called "test.wasm". Then, since you already do web dev, get that test.wasm file and a new page accessible from a local web server. The new page should have this in it: <script> // should log 42 to the console WebAssembly.instantiateStreaming(fetch('https://path/to/test.wasm')).then(prog => { console.log(prog.instance.exports.testfunction()); }); </script> Everything else is facades, layers, and tools on top of that. But that should help clear up what's at the bottom from a web-dev/js perspective. And also what the "2 halves" are. One half being, in your case, that the Rust compiles down eventually to WASM that you host somewhere. The other half being that you need to be able to call into that generated code from your JS.

pjmlp 5y ago

Components in bytecode format with support for C++, where have I seen it? https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/clr https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/clr https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/dotnet/dotnet-programming-with-cpp-cli-visual-cpp?view=msvc-170 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/dotnet/dotnet-programmi...

DonHopkins 5y ago
Oh it goes a lot further back than that! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29593432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29593432
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Indeed, very nice overview.

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sarahmike 5y ago

𝐈 𝐦 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝟗-𝐤 𝐝𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐚 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐡 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞. 𝐈 𝐤𝐞𝐩𝐭 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥 𝐦𝐞 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐦𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐬𝐨 𝐈 𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐢𝐭. 𝐖𝐞𝐥𝐥, 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐨𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐝 𝐦𝐲 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞.. :) GOOD LUCK.:) <(") <(") HERE O════►►► foxofficial1.com

chaz6 5y ago

I think this could be a massive step forward for computing. Imagine if you will an add-on ecosystem for image editors like Krita or video editors like KdenLive. Add-ons could be distruted as a single package and can be run anywhere regardless of the system architecture or software plugin architecture, even within web applications. Write once, run anywhere.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jcelerier 5y ago
i've been working on the "C++ API" side of this if you're interested :) - https://github.com/celtera/avendish https://github.com/celtera/avendish - https://ossia.io/posts/reflection/ https://ossia.io/posts/reflection/ coupled with the definition of a common ABI, the holy grail of reusability may start to be closer
- irq-1 5y ago
  Isn't the memory barrier a huge penalty? (WASM can only access it's own memory, never the hosts.) I've been thinking about how WebAssembly could work server side to host websites, but every step seems to be copy bytes into or out of the VM.
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
> Write once, run anywhere Where have I heard this before ....
- kingcharles 5y ago
  1995 called; it wants its tag line back.
- chaz6 5y ago
  I did consider making a reference to Java but I decided against it as I thought it would be received in the spirit it was intended.

Asraelite 5y ago

From what I've seen of wit (called "witx" back when I last used it) it seems to be pretty skewed towards using Rust as inspiration for its design, even though it's meant to be language agnostic. The syntax is not far off from being a one-to-one copy of Rust. Some examples: `foo: bar` for type annotations, `->` for return types, `enum { a, b }` for C-style enums, `variant { a(b, c) }` for tagged unions, `type a = b` for type aliases, `_` for placeholder types. Its implementation of WASI even uses `-> expected<_, errno>` for most of its return signatures, imitating Rust's Result. I really like Rust's type system and syntax, and none of these design decisions are bad in their own right, I just get the impression that other language communities are not having enough influence in the design of WebAssembly compared to Rust.

matei_radu 5y ago
I think that is a really valid observation, and I would like to point out a couple of things: - the WIT language decisions will end up impacting people writing WIT syntax by hand. I am not sure how large that audience is right now (and I am not dismissing the initial comment), but I really hope we could get good enough tooling that could directly generate WIT (in its eventual binary format) based on annotated source code. - an equally valid observation here is that we need people from multiple programming languages looking at generating _idiomatic bindings_ based on the WIT format, which is what end users will interact with when using components. (Currently there are binding generators for Rust and C/C++, with hopefully Grain following soon enough.)
dcode 5y ago
AssemblyScript maintainer here. Can confirm, other language communities have practically zero influence on the design. In fact, AS was present during "specification" and has been completely annihilated for disagreeing with what the chairing majority has come up with there. It's particularly ironic that the Component Model suddenly targets Web integration again, or that this is now coined "language neutral". In relation, the syntax is more of a minor detail.

DonHopkins 5y ago

Earlier I posted an article by Don Box comparing SOM and COM, and I mentioned that WebAssembly is going through a similar evolution, and might benefit from some of the lessons of COM and SOM: COM vs SOM: The Component Object Model and Some Other Model (1999) (archive.org) https://web.archive.org/web/19990127184653/http://www.develop.com/dbox/COM_vs_SOM_Summ.htm https://web.archive.org/web/19990127184653/http://www.develo... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20266450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20266450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20266627 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20266627 >DonHopkins on June 24, 2019 | prev | next [–] >This article comparing SOM and COM was written by Don Box. (first archived in January 1999, but doesn't say when published): The Component Object Model and Some Other Model: A comparison of technologies revisited yet again: https://web.archive.org/web/19990127184653/http://www.develop.com/dbox/COM_vs_SOM_Summ.htm https://web.archive.org/web/19990127184653/http://www.develo... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Object_Model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Object_Model >It was in response to IBM's somewhat misleading article comparing their SOM with Microsoft COM, last updated July 1994: >The System Object Model (SOM) and the Component Object Model (COM): A comparison of technologies summarized https://web.archive.org/web/19990117055950/http://www.developer.ibm.com/library/ref/SOM_vs_COM_Summ.html https://web.archive.org/web/19990117055950/http://www.develo... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System_Object_Model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System_Object_Model >Don Box wrote an excellent in-depth book about COM: "Essential COM": "Nobody explains COM better than Don Box" -Charlie Kindel, COM Guy, Microsoft Corporation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Box https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Box https://archive.org/details/essentialcom00boxd https://archive.org/details/essentialcom00boxd >Unfortunately COM had the most un-googlable name possible (even before there was a Google), so Microsoft renamed it ActiveX. >For more comtext, here are some notes I wrote about Win32, COM, OLE, OLE Controls, and ActiveX in 1996: https://donhopkins.com/home/interval/pluggers/win32.html https://donhopkins.com/home/interval/pluggers/win32.html https://donhopkins.com/home/interval/pluggers/com.html https://donhopkins.com/home/interval/pluggers/com.html https://donhopkins.com/home/interval/pluggers/ole.html https://donhopkins.com/home/interval/pluggers/ole.html https://donhopkins.com/home/interval/pluggers/olecontrols.html https://donhopkins.com/home/interval/pluggers/olecontrols.ht... https://donhopkins.com/home/interval/pluggers/activex.html https://donhopkins.com/home/interval/pluggers/activex.html >Here's a synopsis of COM I wrote in response to "Can someone link to a synopsis describing what "COM" is? It's hard to search for. (e.g. microsoft com visual studio)": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12975257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12975257 >Don't get me wrong: I'm not advocating everybody jump on the COM bandwagon! I just think it's interesting and useful to know where it came from, how it evolved, what different layers were built on top of it, and how it compared to the alternatives at the time it was designed. And it's still pretty widely used, and will probably never go away. >It certainly had a lot of problems and limitations, and OLE/ActiveX/DCOM/DirectX/etc took it way too far, then Mozilla XP/COM cloned it and also took it way too far (and then back again: see "decomification" and "decomtamination"), but it really was a pretty elegant and successful solution to the problems it was designed to address at the time. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Gecko:DeCOMtamination https://wiki.mozilla.org/Gecko:DeCOMtamination https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12968830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12968830 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=specific&order=relevance+desc&bug_status=__all__&product=&content=decomify&comments=0&comments=1 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=specif... >It's always good to study history to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past! >WebAssembly is going through a similar evolution, and might benefit from some of the lessons of COM and SOM. Also, here's a description of the origins of COM that I posted earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12975257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12975257 >Glad you asked! One of my favorite topics. ;) >COM is essentially a formal way of using C++ vtables [1] from C and other languages, so you can create and consume components in any language, and call back and forth between them. It's a way of expressing a rational subset of how C++ classes work and format in memory, in a way that can be implemented in other languages. >It was the outcome of the C / C++ / Visual Basic language wars at Microsoft. >[...] Also some stuff about Netscape's Internet Foundation Classes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19837817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19837817 >Wow, a blast from the past! 1996, what a year that was. >Sun was freaking out about Microsoft, and announced Java Beans as their vaporware "alternative" to ActiveX. JavaScript had just come onto the scene, then Netscape announced they were going to reimplement Navigator in Java, so they dove into the deep end and came up with IFC, which designed by NeXTStep programmers. A bunch of the original Java team left Sun and formed Marima, and developed the Castanet network push distribution system, and the Bongo user interface editor (like HyperCard for Java, calling the Java compiler incrementally to support dynamic script editing). >[...] There was also a previous discussion about Mozilla's WebAsembly System Interface: Mozilla announces WebAssembly System Interface, what JVM should have been (theregister.co.uk): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19716179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19716179 https://www.theregister.com/2019/03/29/mozilla_wasi_spec/ https://www.theregister.com/2019/03/29/mozilla_wasi_spec/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19717416 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19717416 >DonHopkins on April 22, 2019 | parent | context | favorite | on: Mozilla announces WebAssembly System Interface, wh... >>"WebAssembly has been designed to scale from tiny devices to large server farms or CDNs..." What's ironic is that the "tiny devices" and even "high end professional desktop workstation and server devices" that Java was originally designed to run on when it was started in 1990 were MUCH tinier than the devices considered "tiny" today. >How many more times faster is a typical smartphone today (Raspberry Pi 3: 2,451 MIPS, ARM Cortex A73: 71,120 MIPS) that a 1990 SparcStation 2 pizzabox (28.5 MIPS, $15,000-$27,000)? http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Instructions_per_second http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Instructions_per_second