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Comment by peterth3 | Hacker News Reader

The author isn’t saying it’s a “cure all performance solution.” The quote you copied uses cautious language like “almost always” and “results do vary.”

The author also cites real world apps that have switched to WASM and seen big performance gains (Figma and 1Password), which is much more compelling than the benchmarks you shared.

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You do realize that I didn't put up those benchmarks and wrote the article way back in 2017 just so that I can pick on a passage in this article? I was (and still am to a degree) excited about WASM, actually ported a significant chunk of my business logic from JS to C++ only to discover that the whole thing offered only ~20% performance boost, which didn't merit maintaining a whole separate toolchain. I'm not questioning the exciting results that Figma and such achieve, I'm saying that it's not "almost always" a case, and it's disingenuous to present it as such.

I’m just noticing that my comment went from 5 points to 0 after your reply. I’m sorry if it was upsetting. Of course I know you are not the author of the benchmarks repo.

I made that comment in good faith pointing out that the author was not saying WASM is a catch all performance booster.

But I could get on board with your claim here that “almost always” is disingenuous (which wasn’t what you were saying in the previous comment).

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