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by progfix 694 days ago
Can you run JVM or CLR apps in the browser?
5 comments

Where is the browser in "Orca: WebAssembly Apps Without the Web."?
Where is Orca in "Can you run JVM or CLR apps in the browser?"

If you don't have an answer you can help us all not replying

Nowhere, you apparently missed the point this isn't related to the Web, too eager to reply anything.
The person was just curious about another thing, you apparently missed that you are in HN.
Microsoft has ported CLR (.NET Core) to Webassembly and it runs in the browser. You can indeed run CLR code in the browser. That is how Blazor works
It's pretty bloated and slow compared to alternatives. This may improve if WasmGC gets integrated instead of part of the payload, but it's still not a great solution, especially on constrained devices. The flip side, is running in server mode means the laggy round trip actions that feel somewhat painful in contrast, reminding me of ASP.Net WebForms and how painful that was in practice.
This is not Java applet. The browser can already run WASM code natively.

This is the JVM but using WASM as bytecode, which is to say it is yet another WASM interpreter but this one provides a runtime with a canvas.

Basically a Apple II running UCSD Pascal.
Yes, there are multiple efforts which compile JVM bytecode and CIL bytecode to WASM.
Why would you need to if they run outside the browser?
It is way easier to get someone to click a link than to get them to download and run your app.
Orca requires to download and run your app.
Then what is Orca useful for?
Maybe replacing containers...I had a better developer experience and a better overall quality of life when I deployed war files into a servelet container (tomcat). I wasn't patching operating system vulnerabilities across a jagged sea of micro service images or patching vendor supplied images either (literally had to do that with Kafka). I deployed a fucking war file. That's it. And I'd also imagine that a WASM module\app would have a much snappier start time without having to lug around the overhead of a container...And "Alpine Linux" can go ahead and kiss my ass (no offense).