[chubot]

> Why does WASI need to exist if Java already exists for the intended uses?

IMO, the reason is that the market showed that Java never got used like that. I can only speculate on the reasons, but as far as I can tell it comes down to:

1) The sandbox isn't good enough. See my sibling comment -- the separation between WASM and WASI makes a lot of sense, and I don't think Java had that.

2) The fact that you can't port C code to the JVM easily. In fact WASI addresses exactly that -- the API is more like POSIX than a brand "new" bunch of JVM APIs, which makes it easier to port existing native apps (C, C++, Objective C, Rust, etc.)

In other words, there's still a lot more "value" in native code apps than JVM apps. And it's too hard to port native code applications to the JVM.

For example, Photoshop, Illustrator, Word, Excel, etc. were never ported to the JVM. There are actually better analogs in the browser than on the JVM.

I ran windows for 15 years and Linux for 10-15 years. On neither of those platforms have I ever needed a JVM. I used to play online chess in a Java applet, and that's about it. Most common desktop apps avoid dependencies on the JVM. Probably the only reason I could think of installing one is to use Eclipse or IntelliJ.

The browser is the main reason why anybody had a JVM installed in the first place. Without that hook, the JVM becomes much less important on the client. It's still very important on the server.

Java is important and successful, but it empirically did not succeed at some of its design goals. Of course, WASM and WASI may also fail -- that remains to be seen. But to me they look like a good attempt, based on significantly different technical foundations.

[fulafel]

What is blocking C -> JVM compilation?

There seems to be such a compiler here: https://github.com/bedatadriven/renjin/blob/master/tools/gcc...

[chubot]

I would say it's:

1) There's a large difference between a compiler that exists and an efficient one. The JVM is designed for Java and not C, which makes efficient compilation hard / impossible. Graal as mentioned is an extremely unusual research technique that may make it feasible.

This comment is related:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19065829

Basically people underestimate how hard it is to make a VM that can run multiple languages. JRuby and Jython work, but it takes heroic efforts.

2) The interface to the OS, as mentioned. You can maybe run some algorithms like image processing, but try running the native sqlite code on the JVM, or something even hairier involving networking. It's not straightforward.

WASI provides something that's closer to what C programs expect than what Java provides. As I said, the market voted with its feet. All the friction adds up. If you try hacking on that compiler or manually porting code, you'll probably get a sense of why that is.