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by pjmlp 3080 days ago
No, because you are forced to map language semantics into JavaScript semantics, which is not possible for all features on the source language.

WebAssembly is supposed to eventually turn the browser into a general purpose VM, with all the necessary features to enable whatever compiler one might desire to implement.
1 comments
saurik 3080 days ago
You are assuming a compilation that results in high-level JavaScript code. As JavaScript is a Turing complete language, you can trivially compile any other programming language to target it, and we not only have done that a lot but even made it efficient using asm.js. All WASM is buying us is a more efficient encoding format that can be parsed more quickly than asm.js.
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esrauch 3079 days ago
> All WASM is buying us is a more efficient encoding format that can be parsed more quickly than asm.js.

That is only the initial property. WASM is expected to get a number of new features that aren't expected to come to JS, like actual threads.

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pjmlp 3080 days ago
It also applies to asm.js.

Just because it runs does not mean it does so efficiently, or that 100% of the source language semantics are supported without any constraints.

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