[spc476]

There was. It's Java. I remember when it was first released and it promised the ability to "write once, run anywhere" but delivered via the Web to run as web applets.

And before that in the 80s, there was UCSD Pascal. I know it was available for the Apple ][ (used it in high school) and the IBM PC (one of three operating systems available when IBM launched the IBM PC in August of 1981) and probably a few other platforms I'm blanking on. A defined VM and "executables" could run on any platform running UCSD Pascal.

And even before that, IBM pioneered VMs for their own hardware, which is probably what inspired UCSD Pascal in the first place.

[tmerr]

Web applets are terrible because

  - The JVM takes forever to spin up  
  - The JVM tries to do too much with tons of class libraries  
  - The JVM is insecure  
  - The JVM is proprietary. While there are open source
    implementations, it is still tethered to Sun and now
    Oracle. They call the shots on the features and have
    sued both Google and Microsoft for implementing their
    own versions.

Similar arguments can be made against Flash.

We shouldn't expect WebAssembly to have the same pitfalls, since

  - WebAssembly does not take forever to spin up  
  - WebAssembly doesn't try to do too much. There is no huge
    standard library. For now it doesn't even include a GC.  
  - WebAssembly isn't insecure. Why would it be? I assume
    applet exploits are a product of the large standard 
    library (more attack vectors) and privilege escalation
    (certain exploits let you break out of its security
    settings to gain control). All of this seems like it's
    because web applets are monkeypatched on top of the 
    existing JVM.  
  - WebAssembly isn't proprietary.