D could catch this wave: web assembly

[Joakim via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 24 June 2015 at 09:38:02 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad 
wrote:
>> It's been done, as the FAQ quoted above notes.  If you're 
>> talking about integrating with javascript and DOM objects, 
>> they say they plan to support that eventually also.
>
> I don't think you can have efficient concurrent GC with the IR 
> they seems to aim for.

OK, I don't know enough about GC and their IR to say.

>> alluded to once earlier in this thread.  But that's not the 
>> issue: you seemed to be arguing that the reason there's so 
>> much stuff dumped into the web stack is because they keep the 
>> old stuff around for backwards-compatibility, whereas I was 
>> saying they're dumping in _way_ too much new stuff, forget 
>> about the old stuff.
>
> Most of the new stuff is good. What new stuff is bad?

Well, I think almost _all_ of it is bad, old or new. :) I've said 
so several places in this thread, including pointing out which 
ones.  I do think webasm could be worthwhile though.

>> I love experimentation and trying out new approaches, but 
>> ideally those should get weeded out and rationalized before 
>> being baked into the standard.  At this point, there's too 
>> much stuff getting "standardized," forget about the 
>> single-browser experiments.  It's almost as though the browser 
>> itself has become a giant, bloated experiment, one that never 
>> cuts failed attempts.
>
> Yes, they should start deprecating. But more likely you will 
> just get multiple engines in one browser (like with IE). One 
> modern and one backwards compatible.

All software should have a clear deprecation timeline, or you 
just get monstrosities like XP being supported to this day.  It'd 
help if the source would be released at the end, so the users 
could run with it if they wanted to.

>> So you're editing SVG in the client, ie the browser?  You edit 
>> your text C++ source on your developer workstation and upload 
>> bitcode to the server with webasm, which is what the browser 
>> downloads.  You could do the same with SVG: edit the text SVG 
>> on your workstation and upload a binary encoding for the 
>> server and browser.
>
> But the point is that it is tedious. So people don't want it. 
> Just like C++ is more tedious than Python for evolutionary 
> development.

Yes, but that doesn't mean you give your users your C++ source 
and tell them to compile it themselves. ;) Once you start 
degrading the user experience because of developers' tedium, you 
know the tech is broken.

>> You claimed that "parsing is not the main issue" with SVG, yet 
>> it certainly appears to be an issue with webasm.
>
> Only if webasm is directly translated to machine language.

Regardless of how it's used, bitcode is the default.