3 ms·

Just thinking out loud, does go compile to WASM? I often see performance critical WASM snippets written in rust, but never in Go.

rob74 4y ago
Yes it does, but there are some issues, mainly the size of the compiled WASM file. But you can get around that by using TinyGo. I'm not that deep into it, but this article seems to give a good (and as far as I can see up to date) overview: https://elewis.dev/are-we-wasm-yet-part-1 https://elewis.dev/are-we-wasm-yet-part-1
Philip-J-Fry 4y ago
Go compiles to WASM but the stock compiler is pretty bad for this and your binaries are like 2MB+ in size. TinyGo is an LLVM based compiler that targets microcontrollers but also has a WASM target and that creates considerably smaller binaries, but it doesn't fully support all of the Go standard library.
- doctor_eval 4y ago
  TinyGo is great, I used to to program microcontrollers and there wasn’t anything I really missed, though admittedly it was a very small program.
masklinn 4y ago
Go does compile to wasm, however because wasm is what it is it has to carry around the entire runtime. This is obviously a much bigger issue for delivery over the web than it is for shuffling binaries around, or even more so creating them locally: last I’d checked, the baseline (an empty main function) for a go wasm package is about 1.3M.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Hardly an issue when looking at the ads crap that get download in every "modern" site.
  - masklinn 4y ago
    Sure if your use case for go wasm is ads crap knock yourself out.
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      That wasn't my point, ads and SPA crap available almost in every "modern" site, are several MB bigger in size than Go runtime on WASM. Ergo a a WASM Go application will be much smaller than those "modern" sites. I bet even smaller than GMail and Google Docs.
  - alpaca128 4y ago
    Sure, but I think if you see the size of ad-loaded pages as a size budget or standard for your website you're already on the path towards setting your own bad example.
- yakorevivan 4y ago
prerok 4y ago
Sure it can: https://golangbot.com/webassembly-using-go/ https://golangbot.com/webassembly-using-go/ Never tried it, though :)

rob74 4y ago

Yes it does, but there are some issues, mainly the size of the compiled WASM file. But you can get around that by using TinyGo. I'm not that deep into it, but this article seems to give a good (and as far as I can see up to date) overview: https://elewis.dev/are-we-wasm-yet-part-1 https://elewis.dev/are-we-wasm-yet-part-1

Philip-J-Fry 4y ago

Go compiles to WASM but the stock compiler is pretty bad for this and your binaries are like 2MB+ in size. TinyGo is an LLVM based compiler that targets microcontrollers but also has a WASM target and that creates considerably smaller binaries, but it doesn't fully support all of the Go standard library.

doctor_eval 4y ago
TinyGo is great, I used to to program microcontrollers and there wasn’t anything I really missed, though admittedly it was a very small program.

masklinn 4y ago

Go does compile to wasm, however because wasm is what it is it has to carry around the entire runtime. This is obviously a much bigger issue for delivery over the web than it is for shuffling binaries around, or even more so creating them locally: last I’d checked, the baseline (an empty main function) for a go wasm package is about 1.3M.

pjmlp 4y ago
Hardly an issue when looking at the ads crap that get download in every "modern" site.
- masklinn 4y ago
  Sure if your use case for go wasm is ads crap knock yourself out.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    That wasn't my point, ads and SPA crap available almost in every "modern" site, are several MB bigger in size than Go runtime on WASM. Ergo a a WASM Go application will be much smaller than those "modern" sites. I bet even smaller than GMail and Google Docs.
- alpaca128 4y ago
  Sure, but I think if you see the size of ad-loaded pages as a size budget or standard for your website you're already on the path towards setting your own bad example.
yakorevivan 4y ago

prerok 4y ago

Sure it can: https://golangbot.com/webassembly-using-go/ https://golangbot.com/webassembly-using-go/ Never tried it, though :)