Modern JS executes at about the same speed as Java or about 25% C language speed. A JavaScript application is often faster to initialize into memory than a C language application, largely because less overhead is required for application initialization, but otherwise slower because JS is garbage collected.
These distinctions are crucial when hardware performance really matters, like gaming or scientific data analysis. Otherwise these performance differences just aren’t noticeable to a common user.
Before WASM was a thing 3D gaming engines were ported into Emscripten demos to show case the potential. The output was too slow to play heavy 3D games in a portable browser container but far beyond what you could get away with using JS alone. All that misses the point that you could now run this giant game engine in a web page without installing anything.
These distinctions are crucial when hardware performance really matters, like gaming or scientific data analysis. Otherwise these performance differences just aren’t noticeable to a common user.
Before WASM was a thing 3D gaming engines were ported into Emscripten demos to show case the potential. The output was too slow to play heavy 3D games in a portable browser container but far beyond what you could get away with using JS alone. All that misses the point that you could now run this giant game engine in a web page without installing anything.