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Comment by FridgeSeal | Hacker News Reader

Because it’s not another shitty language runtime like JVM or CLR, it’s a machine-code level target.

You can take your Java/Rust/.Net/Haskell/etc/etc apps and compile them down to WASM, much like you would if you were using LLVM to compile down to assembly.

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I bet the existing AOT compilers for Java and .NET are able to produce much better optimized code than any available WASM implementations.

And LLVM can do better than those in turn, would I prefer if we were using LLVM as the underlying target for machine code? Hell yeah I would, but we’re not quite there yet, and if it’s a toss up between the JS powered 3MB+ websites and endless shitty electron apps or WASM, I’m going to elect for WASM.

At least with WASM if it takes off, it can at least path the way for a more better and more appropriate (LLVM, AoT CLR, etc) universal machine code later down the line. That’ll never happen if we’re chained to JS though.

I rather have the AOT compile times from Java and CLR based toolchains.

As for LLVM as the underlying target for machine code, it is already a thing, nothing new here.

https://www.imsystech.com/high-level-languages/

https://www.infoq.com/articles/ios-9-bitcode

LLVM _is_ the backend for Mono. It's easier for LLVM to produce better code if it doesn't have to go via a register based bytecode VM like WebAssembly. Was discussed here not so long ago: http://troubles.md/posts/wasm-is-not-a-stack-machine/

>and if it’s a toss up between the JS powered 3MB+ websites and endless shitty electron apps or WASM, I’m going to elect for WASM.

I don't know why you think the situation would improve with WASM.

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