this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
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Programming

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What's stopping WebAssembly from effectively replacing JavaScript? (programming.dev)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
45 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I've been wondering about this for a while and haven't really found a great answer for it. From what I understand, WASM is:

  • Faster than JavaScript

  • Has a smaller file size

  • Can be compiled to from pretty much any programming language

  • Can be used outside of the browser easier thanks to WASI

So why aren't most websites starting to try replacing (most) JS with WASM now that it's supported by every major browser? The most compelling argument I heard is that WASM can't manipulate the DOM and a lot of people don't want to deal with gluing JS code to it, but aside from that, is there something I'm missing?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

IIRC a startup tried to exactly that... It's wasn't any faster and is actually harder to develop.

EDIT:

Sorry ignore these videos. I don't remember which YouTube video it is. But more importantly Rust + WASM got really better than JS these days.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The video is essentially saying the exact opposite of what you are saying. It's showing leptos to be much faster than react and I know primeagen doesn't think rust is harder develop.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

My bad. I can't find the actually video but there exits a startup that shutdown because Rust/WASM performance wasn't any better on top of that it's was harder to develop with Rust. But as my edit to my previous comment shows things got better for Rust. It's no longer the case.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=461735zrjzY

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

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