There was a demo the other day of Rust outperforming JS for stuff JS usually does. Presumably this will continue to improve, so it won't even be a case of equivalent, it'll be a case of "thoroughly beats the pants off".
"Very close to native" means "much more efficient than JS", because JS is nowhere near native.
(Have we really gone so far that people hear "native" and think of the browser? Like the web browser is the machine we target, and not the metal box the end user purchased?)
Is it pretty easy to write C++ extensions to V8? I've seen a couple of projects of that sort. I wonder if they're relatively difficult, and if that's perhaps why the push for WebAssembly has been so strong.
(Have we really gone so far that people hear "native" and think of the browser? Like the web browser is the machine we target, and not the metal box the end user purchased?)