Glimmer.js: What’s the Deal with TypeScript?

Re:Glimmer.js: What’s the Deal with TypeScript? by coltonv on Thursday April 13, 2017 @11:04AM (#14107553)

To run python on WebAssembly you would have to compile the entire CPython executable, and every single dependency it has, into WebAssembly, then ship that giant executable with every page so you could then run Python code with it. You would then also most likely need a special library, which at some point someone will have to write or you'll have to write it yourself, to give Python a clean interface to the DOM. All of this together would be at absolute minimum 4.5 megabytes, which is absolutely unacceptably large for a frontend bundle.

WebAssembly is very cool techonology, but it's not going to deprecate Javascript because Javascript will be, at least for a very long time, the only scripting language that runs efficiently on the web, and also will always be the most well supported.

With WebAssembly you could write in any AoT compilation language that can compile on LLVM, but I, and many many other developers, have no interest in very low level languages like C, C++, or Rust in the browser, even though we acknowledge the flaws in JS. Maybe one day higher level languages besides Javascript will be practical, but that's a ways away.

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Re:Glimmer.js: What’s the Deal with TypeScript? by mi100hael on Thursday April 13, 2017 @12:13PM (#14108278)

> To run python on WebAssembly you would have to compile the entire CPython executable, and every single dependency it has, into WebAssembly, then ship that giant executable with every page so you could then run Python code with it.

I mean, that's kind of already the case when you want to ship a Python project as a stand-alone package to run on the desktop. Alternatively, I could see a method of installing runtimes into your browser like plugins so it doesn't have to be shipped over the wire every time. Not saying I'd ever want to do something like that, just that alternatives exist. Browsers are moving more and more towards VMs that transcend the context of a single synchronous request/response.

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Re:Glimmer.js: What’s the Deal with TypeScript? by coltonv on Thursday April 13, 2017 @01:15PM (#14108936)

I could see the plugin system working, but we're years away from that. So saying JS/TS will be deprecated soon is still pretty incorrect.

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Re:Glimmer.js: What’s the Deal with TypeScript? by 6a68 on Friday April 14, 2017 @08:14PM (#14118503)

Just FYI, this has already been done with emscripten a while ago, and it does work. See: http://pypyjs.org/

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Re:Glimmer.js: What’s the Deal with TypeScript? by goatlover on Thursday April 13, 2017 @01:50PM (#14109283)

But by the time you'll be able to do this, maybe most people have gigabit fiber and wifi. At some point in the future, a few megabytes isn't going to matter.

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