> And that’s why it’s ten years old and just getting traction now.
There’s not any particularly meaningful change in its traction. It has specialised situations where it’s very desirable, and it has been used in those specialised situations extensively for quite a few years; and for more general use, it’s trudging along as it ever has been, because it’s not compelling.
> Until it has DOM access nobody working on the front end will be particularly enthused about its utility.
This is also false. Shipping WebAssembly or shipping Web Workers each add complexity, compared with just using main-thread JavaScript, and most people simply can’t justify that—that’s why they’re not interested. But as for DOM access transforming things, I’ll say that Rust is one of the main languages used for targeting WebAssembly (because most languages aren’t suitable), and native DOM bindings is going to change approximately nothing. It will allow/require a slight change in the build process, and slightly change the way you write your own bindings, but that’s all.
I don’t entirely understand why people keep on thinking giving WASM direct access to DOM objects will be transformative. In truth, it’s very minor.
There’s not any particularly meaningful change in its traction. It has specialised situations where it’s very desirable, and it has been used in those specialised situations extensively for quite a few years; and for more general use, it’s trudging along as it ever has been, because it’s not compelling.
> Until it has DOM access nobody working on the front end will be particularly enthused about its utility.
This is also false. Shipping WebAssembly or shipping Web Workers each add complexity, compared with just using main-thread JavaScript, and most people simply can’t justify that—that’s why they’re not interested. But as for DOM access transforming things, I’ll say that Rust is one of the main languages used for targeting WebAssembly (because most languages aren’t suitable), and native DOM bindings is going to change approximately nothing. It will allow/require a slight change in the build process, and slightly change the way you write your own bindings, but that’s all.
I don’t entirely understand why people keep on thinking giving WASM direct access to DOM objects will be transformative. In truth, it’s very minor.