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Comment by flohofwoe | Hacker News Reader

> but it's been almost 10 years since it was announced and there's still no viable alternative to javascript to come out of it

Are you aware if AssemblyScript?

https://www.assemblyscript.org/

But arguably, the main purpose of WebAssembly is to use existing languages on the web, not necessarily invent new ones or even to replace Javascript.

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I've been following AssemblyScript for years but I can't recommend it until they figure out closures: https://github.com/AssemblyScript/assemblyscript/issues/798

AssemblyScript can't access the dom without interfacing with Javascript which is a major piece that needs to be solved with wasm generally.

I'm arguing we should have invented a new native language to replace javascript, which could have provided a stop-gap solution until wasm targeted languages are viable.

> which is a major piece that needs to be solved with wasm generally.

I use WASM everyday and I don't agree that this is anywhere near the top of the things that need to be fixed. The DOM is inherently slow by design, accessing it through a JS shim or "directly" from WASM really wouldn't make any difference in performance.

And on the language level, the DOM is just another web API accessed through a wrapper library like https://rustwasm.github.io/wasm-bindgen/examples/dom.html.

Also the "fixed" Javascript is called Typescript (maybe combined with a very strict linter).

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