[mlevental]

>non-JS WASM backend

...what's a non-js wasm backend?

[slimsag]

WebAssembly can be used anywhere. It is not tied to JavaScript in nature. So think of it kind of like the JVM in a way (but it's not an implementation, just a spec).

[tudelo]

So people are using wasm in a non web context ?

[kodablah]

Yup: https://github.com/cretz/asmble

[slimsag]

Yes. Not a ton of people (yet), but yes, some are.

[EugeneOZ]

but why, if you have plenty of good languages to do this? Wasm is good for browsers because only choice we have is js.

[rictic]

I'm ignorant of the details, but WASM is an assembly language that's designed from the ground up for running untrusted code. It will also have multiple independent open source implementations, which has some nice properties.

[kodablah]

WASM can be good for other things too. It is portable and fairly easy to target. It's like asking "why emscripten of you have plenty of other languages to choose from, LLVM is good for executables"

[mlevental]

but i'm asking what are some webasm languages/backends/use cases that aren't a JS interpreter?

[jononor]

There is a work ongoing to enable WASM to be used for Etherum smart contracts, replacing the custom VM/bytecode.

One could use WASM for reconfigurable on-edge computing, all the way down to microcontrollers.

[swsieber]

WASM for Ethereum would be amazing. There are a lot of languages with much better safety stories than the current one.

[kodablah]

See http://webassembly.org/docs/non-web/. Portability. For example, I can use Rust on the JVM: https://github.com/cretz/asmble/tree/master/examples/rust-re...