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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]

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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] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

There are quite a few web frontend frameworks for rust now that are reasonably mature. Though you might still find a few rough edges they are usable for projects now.

All of these can work without you needing to write any JS code. Though there is JS glue code involved, it is generated and you don't need to worry about it.

But the JS eco system is still quite large and hard to completely avoid.