> More than 20 programming tools vendors offer some 26 programming languages — including C++, Perl, Python, Java, COBOL, RPG and Haskell — on .NET.
Taken from https://news.microsoft.com/2001/10/22/massive-industry-and-d...
In 2001.
At first it seems like an impressive list of languages! But upon closer inspection, over half of them are either abandoned or are commercial products that have been coasting mostly unmaintained for a decade... By now even the JVM ecosystem is a lot healthier.
With WebAssembly, all languages[1] supported by LLVM can be compiled with no custom compiler nonsense. AND we get all the languages[2] that depend on those languages for free as well! The entire burden is on LLVM (and soon GCC) with everything benefiting downstream, surely you can see how it's different from CLI/JVM?
This time the compile-once-run-everywhere promise might actually be true.
1. C, C++, Zig, Rust, etc 2. Python, Perl, PHP, Lua, we can even do some inception with webassembly runtimes.
Or the money from all those VC firms betting the farm on Webassembly startups will dry out.
Until someone comes up with yet another bytecode format, claiming yet again to be UNCOL from 1958.