4 ms·

WASM is widely used and very successful in the browser.

weinzierl 2y ago
That is not the world I see. Where is WASM in the browser really used apart from crypto miners? The world I see is one where WASM is a permanent second class citizen and probably already has reached its peak adoption. Not that I hope for it, quite the contrary, but that is what it looks to me. EDIT: crypto miners and fancy tech demos I should say
- rstat1 2y ago
  >>Where is WASM in the browser really used apart from crypto miners? Amazon's Twitch service (and by extension also AWS's Interactive Video Service product that uses all the same backend stuff). Their video player is either fully a WASM thing or has some WASM components, I'm not completely sure which.
  - weinzierl 2y ago
    "has some WASM components" See, that's the problem. As long as WASM is not able to pull its own weight and needs JavaScript to provide the spine it will languish in a niche or two. Ultimately someone will decide that supporting two different languages and ecosystems is too expensive and not worth the marginal advantage and it will go back to JavaScript only. We've been there and we have done that with Java applets.
    - tadfisher 2y ago
      The ease of interoperation with the host language (JS in this case) is a benefit, not a problem. WASM (without the WASI stuff) is fundamentally a portable assembler target, something that other languages can target, and all the baggage of browser and OS APIs can stay in the host environment and be selectively exposed to the WASM runtime. This makes WASM truly portable (again, without the WASI stuff).
    - postalrat 2y ago
      Come up with great interface for web apps in WASM and the world will follow. Eventually browsers can just implement your interface directly without the javascript glue.
    - unrealhoang 2y ago
      nah, web developers that aren't doing simple CRUD are using interesting libraries powered by wasm without even care that it's powered by wasm: opencv, sqlite, duckdb, imagemagick, ffmpeg, ... anything AI/using GPU: tensorflowjs. Those libraries are not something will be able to be JS only anytime soon, and no, Java applets has never allowed us to use C/C++ libraries on the web before.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- apitman 2y ago
  Oh are you referring more to browser vendor support for WASM, such as adding better APIs for interfacing, etc? There I completely agree with you. I though you meant it isn't used by web developers, which it very much is.
- manveru 2y ago
  A place I recently saw it was in the web editor for typst. It runs the same code as the CLI since it's compiled from rust for both targets.
- azakai 2y ago
  > Where is WASM in the browser really used apart from crypto miners? Art and design: Photoshop, Figma Games: Unity, many other engines or components inside engines (e.g. Bullet) Videoconferencing: Zoom, Google Meet, etc. Productivity: Google Sheets Other: Google Maps and many, many more. For example, here is a talk about how Google uses wasm in a large range of its products: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2En8cj6xlv4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2En8cj6xlv4 Look, wasm is a supplementary technology, used where JavaScript isn't good enough, like all the examples I just gave. Those use cases work extremely well right now, and most users on the web benefit from wasm, even if they are unaware wasm is running on the page - which is how it should be. That is exactly the success that wasm aimed for from the start.
  - weinzierl 2y ago
    People have made that same argument about Java applets 25 years ago and we all know how that panned out. I see your point and I see and love the advantages of WASM but I doubt they will be enough to outweigh the burden to support two ecosystems in the long run. Support in the browser, as well as on the development side. "That is exactly the success that wasm aimed for from the start." If this is true WASM has been doomed from the start. If WASM doesn't set out to eat JavaScript's cake it will be left with the crumbs and slowly but surely starve to death.
    - azakai 2y ago
      The difference with Java applets from back then is that wasm was designed by web browsers in order to work well in them. Java applets were plugins, which led to security issues, and worse, security issues not under the control of the browser. Wasm is a proper part of the browser. Java applets had limited interop with JavaScript and HTML. Wasm is also somewhat limited there, but it was designed to at least have fast calls to JavaScript itself. Java also has language-specific issues. Most native code that people want to run on the web is not written in Java or another JVM language. Wasm was designed to support compilation from C++, Rust, etc. (and it has recently added Java support too).
  - colonial 2y ago

That is not the world I see. Where is WASM in the browser really used apart from crypto miners? The world I see is one where WASM is a permanent second class citizen and probably already has reached its peak adoption. Not that I hope for it, quite the contrary, but that is what it looks to me. EDIT: crypto miners and fancy tech demos I should say

rstat1 2y ago
>>Where is WASM in the browser really used apart from crypto miners? Amazon's Twitch service (and by extension also AWS's Interactive Video Service product that uses all the same backend stuff). Their video player is either fully a WASM thing or has some WASM components, I'm not completely sure which.
- weinzierl 2y ago
  "has some WASM components" See, that's the problem. As long as WASM is not able to pull its own weight and needs JavaScript to provide the spine it will languish in a niche or two. Ultimately someone will decide that supporting two different languages and ecosystems is too expensive and not worth the marginal advantage and it will go back to JavaScript only. We've been there and we have done that with Java applets.
  - tadfisher 2y ago
    The ease of interoperation with the host language (JS in this case) is a benefit, not a problem. WASM (without the WASI stuff) is fundamentally a portable assembler target, something that other languages can target, and all the baggage of browser and OS APIs can stay in the host environment and be selectively exposed to the WASM runtime. This makes WASM truly portable (again, without the WASI stuff).
  - postalrat 2y ago
    Come up with great interface for web apps in WASM and the world will follow. Eventually browsers can just implement your interface directly without the javascript glue.
  - unrealhoang 2y ago
    nah, web developers that aren't doing simple CRUD are using interesting libraries powered by wasm without even care that it's powered by wasm: opencv, sqlite, duckdb, imagemagick, ffmpeg, ... anything AI/using GPU: tensorflowjs. Those libraries are not something will be able to be JS only anytime soon, and no, Java applets has never allowed us to use C/C++ libraries on the web before.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
apitman 2y ago
Oh are you referring more to browser vendor support for WASM, such as adding better APIs for interfacing, etc? There I completely agree with you. I though you meant it isn't used by web developers, which it very much is.
manveru 2y ago
A place I recently saw it was in the web editor for typst. It runs the same code as the CLI since it's compiled from rust for both targets.
azakai 2y ago
> Where is WASM in the browser really used apart from crypto miners? Art and design: Photoshop, Figma Games: Unity, many other engines or components inside engines (e.g. Bullet) Videoconferencing: Zoom, Google Meet, etc. Productivity: Google Sheets Other: Google Maps and many, many more. For example, here is a talk about how Google uses wasm in a large range of its products: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2En8cj6xlv4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2En8cj6xlv4 Look, wasm is a supplementary technology, used where JavaScript isn't good enough, like all the examples I just gave. Those use cases work extremely well right now, and most users on the web benefit from wasm, even if they are unaware wasm is running on the page - which is how it should be. That is exactly the success that wasm aimed for from the start.
- weinzierl 2y ago
  People have made that same argument about Java applets 25 years ago and we all know how that panned out. I see your point and I see and love the advantages of WASM but I doubt they will be enough to outweigh the burden to support two ecosystems in the long run. Support in the browser, as well as on the development side. "That is exactly the success that wasm aimed for from the start." If this is true WASM has been doomed from the start. If WASM doesn't set out to eat JavaScript's cake it will be left with the crumbs and slowly but surely starve to death.
  - azakai 2y ago
    The difference with Java applets from back then is that wasm was designed by web browsers in order to work well in them. Java applets were plugins, which led to security issues, and worse, security issues not under the control of the browser. Wasm is a proper part of the browser. Java applets had limited interop with JavaScript and HTML. Wasm is also somewhat limited there, but it was designed to at least have fast calls to JavaScript itself. Java also has language-specific issues. Most native code that people want to run on the web is not written in Java or another JVM language. Wasm was designed to support compilation from C++, Rust, etc. (and it has recently added Java support too).
- colonial 2y ago