3 ms·

I'm likely in the minority in my thinking, but I don't think targeting wasm with managed languages is such a great use case for wasm anyway, and so it wasn't wo

I'm likely in the minority in my thinking, but I don't think targeting wasm with managed languages is such a great use case for wasm anyway, and so it wasn't worth building in GC to support. For the times you want to, something light like reference counting should be easy enough.

munificent 4y ago
I'm biased since I work on a managed language that targets the web, but I strongly believe that it is a great use case for WASM. Most programs targeting WASM are client-side apps with rich user experiences and I believe all but a small fraction of users would be better served implementing rich UIs in managed languages. Doing UI work in C++ (which I have done plenty of) is a special exercise is pain for almost no upside. GC is great.
- discreteevent 4y ago
  I went back to that pain a few years ago after many years away from it. After a few months I got right back in the swing of things. Spending my days arranging and solving little memory ownership problems.I got to thinking: "This is programming". And I didn't really mind it. But every so often I had to be honest and remind myself of what I had noticed at the beginning: Thinking about and managing memory is a colossal waste of time, even with smart pointers and the like - The machine can do that and has been able to do it efficiently for most things for a long time.
- smolder 4y ago
  JavaScript is already a GC'd language effective at UI, so it doesn't seem to me like there's a strong need for wasm to fill the same role. Rather, it seems to me like wasm is better suited to accelerating processing-heavy tasks those rich web apps depend on, like custom [de]compression, ML models, data processing, image processing or simulation of some kind.
jacobp100 4y ago
If your language uses a tracing GC, you can’t just add reference counting and expect existing programs to work without memory leaks

munificent 4y ago

I'm biased since I work on a managed language that targets the web, but I strongly believe that it is a great use case for WASM. Most programs targeting WASM are client-side apps with rich user experiences and I believe all but a small fraction of users would be better served implementing rich UIs in managed languages. Doing UI work in C++ (which I have done plenty of) is a special exercise is pain for almost no upside. GC is great.

discreteevent 4y ago
I went back to that pain a few years ago after many years away from it. After a few months I got right back in the swing of things. Spending my days arranging and solving little memory ownership problems.I got to thinking: "This is programming". And I didn't really mind it. But every so often I had to be honest and remind myself of what I had noticed at the beginning: Thinking about and managing memory is a colossal waste of time, even with smart pointers and the like - The machine can do that and has been able to do it efficiently for most things for a long time.
smolder 4y ago
JavaScript is already a GC'd language effective at UI, so it doesn't seem to me like there's a strong need for wasm to fill the same role. Rather, it seems to me like wasm is better suited to accelerating processing-heavy tasks those rich web apps depend on, like custom [de]compression, ML models, data processing, image processing or simulation of some kind.

jacobp100 4y ago

If your language uses a tracing GC, you can’t just add reference counting and expect existing programs to work without memory leaks