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How do browser standards work w.r.t ensuring things like wasm are still here and functional in 10 years time? What if our friends at Google, controllers of the
by nsteel 4y ago
How do browser standards work w.r.t ensuring things like wasm are still here and functional in 10 years time? What if our friends at Google, controllers of the most popular browser, decide they can't be bothered with WebAssemnly anymore? I'm extremely wary to invest resources in things they control. I know they don't technically have control here, but is there any cause for concern?
- flohofwoe 4y agoWell, ultimately if Google decides that Chrome won't support WASM anymore than it's over, same as Apple decided that Flash is over (or Google decided that NaCl would be over and they put their effort into supporting WASM instead). But: WebGL1 is much more niche than WASM and it's still around and well supported after 12 years. WASM was announced in 2015 and released in 2017, so it's also not exactly "new" anymore. WASM is such a small part of browsers (for instance compared to a JS engine) that dropping it would really not be worth it. It just delivers too much bang for the buck.
- kevingadd 4y agoWebAssembly is so widely used at this point that it would need a replacement first. Once that replacement shows up and becomes adopted widely you can start worrying. "Just use JavaScript and WebGL/Canvas" was a big part of the justification for why it was OK to shoot Flash and Unity in the head.