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Comment by TekMol | Hacker News Reader

    It's written in JS so you'll need node to run it

I happily run JS in my browser all day. Why do I need node for this code?

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Because different runtimes support different features and performance (like dealing with files and disk access) but I already posted the link for the browser version in that comment.

I think that's not quite what was asked for. What was asked for is one JS file with a function that takes a string and returns a string. Not a node package, not a website. Check out Three.js, it's a big library which can be used as one file three.min.js.

If you check the `dist` folder within the linked Git repository you can see a `walt.min.js` file[0]. You should be able to include that file and try out the package in your browser in a similar way to how you use `three.min.js`.

[0] https://github.com/ballercat/walt/blob/master/packages/walt-...

https://unpkg.com/walt-compiler@0.16.2/dist/walt.js

Maybe so you can deliver precompiled wasm to a browser rather than having to deliver the source and a compiler?

You don't need node to compile WASM or deliver it to the browser, either.

The only reason this "needs" NPM is because it's become convention that all javascript projects need NPM and some related toolchain regardless of their complexity.

No, the convention is that Javascript projects are distributed as source rather than as "binaries" (single minified JS files.) Source code generally needs a build tool. NPM is a build tool.

> Why do I need node for this code?

The next paragraph of the comment you replied to answers that — you don’t, you can use https://ballercat.github.io/walt/ in your browser.

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