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I would ask the question the other way around: do browsers really need JavaScript?

It's a lot easier to maintain a WebAssembly engine than a JavaScript engine.

Really interesting to hear you say that — Thanks for the WASM impl in Zig!

On the do-browsers-need-js point, you might be interested in:

WASM came about as a result of demand, not because people had too much free time.

Browsers were being used for more complex things, which resulted in companies adopting hacky solutions to enable more performance.

WASM is seeking to develop a consistent standard for these use cases.

iirc WASM bytecode closely resembles V8 IR. If you're writing a JS engine, might as well provide a more direct frontend to it... I don't think it adds much.