[6510]

The assumption is that javascript is bad and that the solution is to not fix it. asm.js was another example.

[lxgr]

asm.js was the opposite of an alternative to JavaScript: It was a performant JavaScript dialect used as a compilation target for various languages otherwise targeting emscripten.

WASM is the spiritual successor to that, getting rid of the (in retrospect quite hilarious) "embedded backwards compatibility layer".

[6510]

You don't compile to js because js is slow.

edit: for the record, I think having only one doc type (html) and only one scripting language (js) in the browser is a terrible idea.

I don't know what the other doc types and programming languages should be but performance alone seems like a poor idea. A compile target seems even worse. :)