[leptons]

Call me crazy but, WASM won't replace JavaScript. There are so many cases where a simple script will do. Firing up a terminal, writing in another language, compiling and going through the trouble to turn something simple into WASM is actually the crazy thing to do. Also, I am in no way approving of the techniques described in the article.

[chamomeal]

Yeah but most big web apps aren’t simple. If wasm ever replaces JS in a significant way, it won’t be replacing simple scripts. It’ll be replacing webpack lol

[leptons]

>It's crazy that people say that WASM won't replace JavaScript.

>big web apps

So you've defined the goalpost as "big web apps". There are billions more use cases for Javascript than however many "big web apps" might exist. So your phrasing is too broad, maybe consider:

>>It's crazy that people say that WASM won't replace JavaScript in big web apps.

Nobody's saying that. You are free to use WASM for your "big web app". Nobody and nothing is stopping you.

WASM certainly has its place, but it also certainly won't replace JavaScript in most of the places JavaScript is used every day. "Big web apps" are (my guess) maybe 1,000,000 of the 49,501,698 websites that use JavaScript, but it would depend on how you define "big web app" (and I really don't want go down that goal-posting rabbit hole). There are 13.8 million people writing javascript every day, how many of them do you think are working on "big web apps" that actually need WASM? How many of them do you think want to switch to Rust from Javascript? "developers" always seem to think everyone else should be some rockstar 10x programmer, but most use cases for javascript are pretty simple, and yet totally effective for what the requirements typically are.

[chamomeal]

Damn I’m just playing devils advocate for your point of “WASM won’t replace JS because there is a build process”.

I don’t think everybody needs to be building big web apps, I just think that most full time developers writing JS (or TS) are probably on a team working on a web app, so the introduction of a build process isn’t really an issue.

Of course it’s valid to write good ol’ javascript. I do it all the time. I’m always happy to avoid dealing with webpack

[metadaemon]

I do love the idea of a dedicated compiler handling my builds. Even with the most modern build tools today, large web applications can take minutes to build which doesn't include type checking, linting and testing. If you're not prioritizing build times as your app grows, this can quickly balloon.

[explaininjs]

Why would wasm be needed for build time tools? We already use fast compiled languages for modern webpack replacements (esbuild, swc, Bun :: Go, Rust, Zig), and they don’t use wasm.