That's like saying that the Watt steam engine [1] was basically Newcomen's atmospheric engine [2], not to mention the Aeolipile [3] from ancient Greece.
Yeah, if you squint hard enough, everything new is just the reinvention of the wheel [4]. And yet – sometimes small, incremental improvements are what it takes to push a concept (steam powered machines, or bytecode for execution in the browser) from niche applications to being a breakthrough technology. I don't know if WebAssembly will be that incremental improvement, but claiming that it won't because Java tried and failed is a lazy, fallacious argument.
[4] Speaking of reinventing the wheel: Those radial tires, eh, who needs them? They're basically just like cross ply tires. Not to mention the spoked wooden wheels that have been around since forever.
I think you missed the part about it running in the browser? But yes, some previous technologies are similar to some new technologies, that's not really an insight at this point. Especially not about bytecode interpreters which seems like a standard practice.
The extent of Wasm's availability on browsers is quite big right now. Both iOS and Android and all major desktop browsers. That sort of reach is what I meant by the term "the browser" used generically. Different from being an extension to one or a few browsers or something like that.
Yes, in the sense that everything that shares some history or idea is the same thing.
Like C and O are both chemical elements, so basically interchangeable, or like horse carriages and oil tankers are both methods of transporting things.
Yeah, if you squint hard enough, everything new is just the reinvention of the wheel [4]. And yet – sometimes small, incremental improvements are what it takes to push a concept (steam powered machines, or bytecode for execution in the browser) from niche applications to being a breakthrough technology. I don't know if WebAssembly will be that incremental improvement, but claiming that it won't because Java tried and failed is a lazy, fallacious argument.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watt_steam_engine
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomen_atmospheric_engine
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile
[4] Speaking of reinventing the wheel: Those radial tires, eh, who needs them? They're basically just like cross ply tires. Not to mention the spoked wooden wheels that have been around since forever.