WASM isn't "more ambitious". It is a spec for portable bytecode, nothing more, nothing less.

LLVM is one of the best toolchains for many languages.

They are completely different things.

Yes, I agree. Wording wasn't right. What I meant was that it is trying to define a universal target with runtime system interface and such. The only reason I drew a comparison was that both are trying to bring standardization, but in different contexts.

> maybe 2-3x the speed of the equivalent javascript code.

That is an insane difference even if nowhere close to native code.

Some engineering fields would be crazy with a 20% gain... 200% is huge!

I agree it still is signficant, but this is not how wasm is being touted. Look at wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebAssembly#History

They even say asm.js is supposed to be "near-native code execution speeds". In my experience, it is no where close to native speed. People should avoid this kind of deceptive marketing.

On that front, I agree. Wasm is being sold as the greatest innovation ever, when it is just another virtual ISA with lacking features and performance.

For a lot of "usual" webdev, any reasonably modern language will do. Even modern JavaScript will be fine. Something like C# would have been way better, though, but we cannot change that now.

However... software development has become a mess of slow technologies and abstractions one on top of the other.

Some people are working routinely in a text editor that is behind three operating systems: the VM/hypervisor, the usual operating system (Windows/macOS/Linux) and then a browser instance (which is like a operating system now). Then add all the drivers, libraries, frameworks etc. that go in-between.

While I don't like that WebAssembly is yet another abstraction, at least it is a chance for a resurgence of system programming languages and to proper software engineering...

Why can't you use C#? .Net Core (upcoming .Net 5) are pretty decent to work with. I'd still rather use node for the most part though.

I have been playing with Rust, but not sure about how good an idea it is for the front end yet though.

Well, you can compile the .NET runtime into Wasm, send it to the client and run C# on top of it, but then you are adding yet another layer.

I didn't have the impression the discussion was a web context. In which case if lean straight js/react or rust/yew

Pretty sure the parent comment was talking about client side.

You can use C# on the front end now with Blazor. It's pretty new though so I don't know how good it is yet.

No, commit messages are not meant for "auxiliary information", but for giving the reasoning behind a change.

Of course people read them.

If you work in projects with a hundred other engineers or projects with maintenance, then there is no way you can get a sane code base without commit messages and reviews.

However, if you work alone and do not need maintenance, then yes, they are pointless since you will never need to read them.

> you will never need to read them.

Six months later: Why did I do this?

The commit is the reason behind a change, not the reason why some code is written like that.

A UI prototype is not a product, much less a viable one.

See the other commentors replying to my thread. MVP doesn't necessarily have to literally be a usable product, it just needs to validate a hypothesis.

The very definition of MVP means a viable product. It has nothing to do with an "hypothesis". Sorry, but you are misusing the term.

No, I'm not. I've shown you examples of how I'm not, and of how words change meanings, and if you do not believe so, then there's nothing else I can say.

Commercial games benefit way less than other code from being open source, since they are very short-lived projects once released.

Further, games would be very easy to copy for users, to develop cheats for multiplayer, to duplicate by competitors, etc.

The games, sure. But what about the tooling? Behaviour trees, fsm visualizers, debug tools, better linters, multiplayer frameworks, ecs implementations, or even just tech talks. Outside of game dev, there are so many tech talks all the time on every possible subject, sharing knowledge. In game dev, there is GDC and a few others, but it’s just far less common

The closest of multiplayer games die the day they shut down the servers.

The longest lived games are the longest lived because they are open enough for the community to keep them alive.

Eeh... automata, languages (of all kinds, not just regular), grammars, complexity, etc. are used in computer engineering all the time.

If a computer engineering degree does not have those, then it is a pretty bad one.

No, it will not be reintroduced. There is no use for it. That belongs in a fork.

I love that idea, but I still prefer it’d read the same as an if. Meaning the condition first and the false case last.

Rust implements this:

    let foo = if is_employed() { 2000 } else { 0 }