Using WASM with Rust | Hacker News Reader

Using WASM with Rust

wiki.alopex.li

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I really like this JS-free future we have ahead of us. I mean, I needed to format a date as text recently, and JS can't even do that without downloading some library... The sooner we'll be able to use real languages on the front-end, the better.

I'm not sure that'll ever happen now (as much as I would like it). JS/TS has inserted itself into just about every area and theres a whole lot of Javascript developers who are going to want to keep writing Javascript. It's basically the PHP of it's day.

Let them have it, they certainly have fun reinventing wheels and dealing with dependency issues etc. That won't prevent a new WASM ecosystem from springing up. Not in the least because, as the article says, WASM is a sandbox not jusy for browser use.

Since I recently developed an infatuation with nodejs (after 20 years of hating on js), would you mind sharing the "date as text" requirement? It should be trivial to compose with a string literal if the builtin toLocaleDateString() doesn't cut it.

There's some talk about desktop application, but how will it work? Will people need to download something like the JRE to run WASM programs?

My personal guess is that there'll be two main ways end users use WASM apps. One will be the browser naturally, but with a push for PWAs. If you go to an app URL and like it, you can "install" it from the browser menu. This isn't WASM specific and sites like Twitter and Instagram already do this, but I suspect we'll see a bigger push from players like Google to make WASM PWAs.

The other main way will likely be "native" apps that are based on Electron or a similar framework. Electron is already Chromium based so WASM support will likely be included in Electron (if it's not already) and devs will make "native" apps that way that are downloadable, or installable from OS app stores.

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