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by jstimpfle
968 days ago
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> The thing that nags me with WASM is how so many people try to sell it, as if it was the very first of its kind. I don't get that vibe. Just ask, how do you get to write applications with good, predictable performance, perhaps with multithreading and explicit memory management, in the browser? It doesn't matter how much of this has existed before in some form or shape. It's ablut the "product" more than it is about grandiose ideas (and the product might not be completely there yet, at least it wasn't some 3 years ago) |
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1. WASM as a browser tech for delivering rich applications inside the browser. On this one I will shrug. I understand the motivation. I don't particularly like it, because my vision of the "web" is not that, but it's a lost battle and I don't have a horse in this race. It's effectively the resurrection of Java applets, but done better, and more earnestly. It's going to solve the kinds of problems you're talking about, I guess, but introduce new ones (even more inconsistency of UX, accessibility features, performance issues, etc.)
2. WASM as a general / universal runtime for server side work. On this, I see a lot of hype, thin substance, a lot of smoke but no fire, and I'm quite skeptical. It looks to me like classic "Have a Hammer, Going to Go find Nails" syndrome. I was initially enthused about this aspect of WASM but I had a job employed working with WASM for a bit and I found a lot to be skeptical about. And while likely will be using WASM in some fashion similar to this for a project I have, I am also not convinced that WASM itself makes a lot of sense as some sort of generic answer for containerization, and looks to me like duplication of effort, claims of novelty where there is none, unhealthy cycles in the tech industry, etc.
Anyways, I think the person you're replying to, and myself, are primarily talking about #2 -- as was the original article