Bytecode Alliance Preparing For Wasmtime 1.0 Releasing Later This Month

[oleid]

Yeah, it is pretty much the same stuff Apple created years ago.

What are you talking about?

[bug77]

Ah yes, more runtimes. My Python, Perl, Java, .NET and JavaScript runtimes are feeling sooo lonely.

This has nothing to do with runtimes you mentioned. Last I checked (admittedly, a while ago) WASM only offered support for handling primitive values. You had to jump though a lot of hoops to transfer a data structure to and from WASM. I expect this runtime exists to offer some sort of a reference implementation for that.

[ssokolow]

This has nothing to do with runtimes you mentioned. Last I checked (admittedly, a while ago) WASM only offered support for handling primitive values. You had to jump though a lot of hoops to transfer a data structure to and from WASM.

They've since added support for the multi-value extension (allowing returning tuples similar to in Python, Go, and Rust), and the reference types extension, which allows you to hand opaque handles to things like callbacks back and forth. They're currently working on the exception handling extension and others.

I expect this runtime exists to offer some sort of a reference implementation for that.

As I understand it, you're correct.

[Jabberwocky]

Sorry that I assumed that it was easy to understand what I meant.

WASM is a product of something that was a bad idea to start with. Yeah we are writing applications in our browser... oh now it is slow... now lets make JavaScript faster... yeah so now lets use JavaScript for the backend (nodejs)... oh no our poorly written software is slow again... lets make stuff like asm.js... oh now it is garbage... now lets make something like WebAssembly... oh cool lets create the backend with WebAssembly (Wasmtime)... ah shit here we go again...

It just another runtime that changes tiny bits of something that is already there. And if your Bytecode is called JVM, CLR, WASM does not really matter. Reinvention of the wheel again. I just hope it will fail horribly.

WebAssembly deterministically promises a faster, safer internet. Why would you want it to fail?

JVM

We come up with good ideas in theory just to mess up the implementations. IMO most of the time it's due to mismanagement and not bad design or engineering problems. I studied java bytecode. The design was impressive. Software like Eclipse was a huge achievement and helped with the development of many projects. The current state of the JVM is a sad affair to put it nicely, it has been going downhill for many years. I have not used Eclipse in a long time, but it still works. IntelliJ/Jetbrains is another example. It runs without problems on a Pi 4.

CLR

I don't use Microsoft for work, I never have. I can only comment form a user perspective or the brief experience I had with Mono. Microsoft broke compatibility multiple times and modern software still depend on unsupported versions of CLR, for example Unreal Engine 5 (released this year) still uses CLR 2 (dotNet 3.5). There are many more examples. Mono obviously suffers from the same problem.

JavaScript

The only thing I learned from Javascript over the past 15 years is that it doesn't matter how slow, insecure or discombobulated your runtime/syntax is, as long as it's easy to learn and you don't break compatibility then it would be successful. Look at PHP & hacklang, or JS and turbofan... If it's popular then industry will spend big bucks to optimize the **** out of it.

From a business perspective JS is brilliant the stats shows it. Javascript is absolutely terrible from a scientific perspective. The syntax, broken comparison operators (type conversion), prototype-system etc... these issues are not the end of the world. Code generators like Typescript fixes most but not all of the issues.

The runtimes on the other hand are any sane person's worst nightmare. For the average user it's not a problem, Google overs top dollar to bug bounties. The only problem is there are not many people on this planet that can properly analyze the code as it requires extreme specialization. The question is does Google offer more than a company that sells exploits to the highest bidder? I digress, this isn't a problem for most users. I agree with professional security analysts: JS runtimes are not as trustworthy as one might hope as most people with a digital device is using JS today. WASM and JS will typically run in the same browser sandbox env, this does not imply that both have the same level of security.

WebAssembly

WebAseembly checks many of the important boxes IMO. It's difficult to predict the future, who knows where it will end up. I can only hope for the best.

JS backwards compatibility already exists by running Sipermonkey on WASI. EMCA has abandoned SIMD in favor of WebAssembly. This gives you an idea of where things are headed: https://github.com/tc39/ecmascript_simd

Other Junk

You forgot about ActiveX, Silverlight, Flash, and JavaFX.

[bug77]

Jabberwocky Fwiw, JavaFX wasn't meant for the web, Java Applets were. JavaFX worked the other way around: take CSS styling and whatnot and put that on the desktop. Kind of an Electron before Electron.