It's an open standard. Designed with security in mind. That can reuse a lot of the things already made for Javascript. That is intentionally small and simple. That doesn't try to reinvent things such as UI (web browsers already have everything we need).

> How is WebAssembly any different to/better than the clusterfuck that Flash became?

The difference is not really in WebAssembly, but in ourselves. Back when Flash was breaking the Web, just about everyone it not just because it was insecure, unstable & violated privacy, but primarily because it was breaking the Web. Nowadays, people don't mind that JavaScript is insecure, unstable & violates privacy, and they're fine with breaking the Web.

The Web of interlinked documents is no longer an idea which captivates people: the great captivating idea of our time is the app. Nevermind that we're deploying apps atop a scripting language for a hyperlinked document system, people want apps.

Is it any different from Flash? Well, it's better-executed. It's mostly not as bad as Flash was. But it's still not great.

I don't even really necessarily mind apps. It's cool, not having to worry about Linux support from e.g. Google. But I miss the Web, and I absolutely hate when things which are static documents are turned into dynamic apps for no good reason.