3 ms·

I really, really can't wait for the extension to WASM to allow it direct access to the DOM and finally be able to remove the need for JS for 99% of its usage.

by maeln 3y ago

I really, really can't wait for the extension to WASM to allow it direct access to the DOM and finally be able to remove the need for JS for 99% of its usage. I do a lot of frontend development and I just cannot fathom how badly design JS as a language is and how awful the developer experience is. Every time I talk about JS shortcoming with other frontend dev, they point out that JS can do X or Y which other language cannot, but usually it is just a hack that are just not needed in other language because they actually do things properly (like having an actual sane type system and not having three ways to express that a variable is null). And TS is just a crutch that can barely help JS shortcoming. Finally being able to compile from any language to a, reasonably sane, bytecode that can run in-place of JS is just a miracle and I don't understand why it took so damn long. JS should have been deprecated long ago. Even ActionScript was better. Anyway, rant over.

madeofpalk 3y ago
> and how awful the developer experience is. Can you put breakpoints in WASM and debug frontend code?
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  Yes, source map generation for modern languages has existed for a few years now. You can debug Rust/C++/Go straight from your browser's dev tools. Altering memory is more complicated, though.
jeroenhd 3y ago
JS can do some things very well that others can't. Prototype based reflection is very powerful! Its problem is that the things Javascript excels at aren't all that useful, and the things it's bad at are often sold as features instead ("duck typing means I can iterate faster!").
marcosdumay 3y ago
> to allow it direct access to the DOM Hum... Direct calling the DOM API is there already. You may be thinking about FFI marshaling, that there is something on the pipeline for helping (I don't even remember exactly what). But that's only a small improvement on speed, and that almost never is a dealbreaker. For a while I thought the garbage collection helper was a dealbreaker (for anything except Rust), but GC languages are starting to compile into WASM too, with just a small performance hit. (I haven't looked exactly how.) This year and the next are looking like some serious promising period for non-JS programing on the browser.

by maeln 3y ago

madeofpalk 3y ago

> and how awful the developer experience is. Can you put breakpoints in WASM and debug frontend code?

jeroenhd 3y ago
Yes, source map generation for modern languages has existed for a few years now. You can debug Rust/C++/Go straight from your browser's dev tools. Altering memory is more complicated, though.

jeroenhd 3y ago

JS can do some things very well that others can't. Prototype based reflection is very powerful! Its problem is that the things Javascript excels at aren't all that useful, and the things it's bad at are often sold as features instead ("duck typing means I can iterate faster!").

marcosdumay 3y ago

> to allow it direct access to the DOM Hum... Direct calling the DOM API is there already. You may be thinking about FFI marshaling, that there is something on the pipeline for helping (I don't even remember exactly what). But that's only a small improvement on speed, and that almost never is a dealbreaker. For a while I thought the garbage collection helper was a dealbreaker (for anything except Rust), but GC languages are starting to compile into WASM too, with just a small performance hit. (I haven't looked exactly how.) This year and the next are looking like some serious promising period for non-JS programing on the browser.