4 ms·

If anyone knows, is this classic video the reason the wasm “assembly” format is called ‘.wat’? I always suspected/assumed it was

• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• kibwen 4y ago
  The format would have inevitably had "wa" somewhere in it for "web assembly", and indeed I assume that the authors were well aware of this famous talk and chose "wat" as a cheeky reference.
  • almog 4y ago
    Perhaps this talk/prophecy is also encapsulated in that reference: https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of-javascript https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death...
• capableweb 4y ago
  I did some digging on that in the past and didn't come up with any conclusion. I guess it's possible that someone somewhere came up with it as a reference to the video. But also, maybe it's just a coincident and they came up with WebAssembly Text Format first, then the acronym. But then it should have been WATF instead, so maybe no, after all... Would love any sort of reference to the discussion(s) where the naming and file format name comes up, but didn't find anything relevant last time I looked.
• kevingadd 4y ago
  For a while they were .wast files, I don't remember there ever being an official discussion or debate over whether to make it .wat. Your guess at least seems plausible.