Do we know if we are likely to see support for WebAssembly for all platforms? It looks like a way to bypass the app store. I am surprised apple or google (on android) would be happy to do so.
Web apps have been a pretty good way to bypass the app store for quite a while now, and Apple/Google don't seem to have a problem with that. Heck, Google is even taking steps to integrate web apps more deeply into Android so that they're almost indistinguishable from native apps: https://blog.chromium.org/2017/02/integrating-progressive-we...
WASM just means these apps will be faster, with closer-to-native performance.
Exactly. Apple won't support WebAss, and I'm WITH them on this one. Why does a browser have to run native apps with a laughable/non-existant, designed-by-comitee API? That's what the operating system is for IMO.
WebAss is a technical solution to an economic problem: lackluster SW sales and adblocking
I don't agree with you. The only language that allows truly cross platform development right now is javascript. It's a language I do not like and I believe I am not the only one. In fact the popularity of extensions like typescript is an evidence of the challenges of using what was meant to be a simple scripting language as a full blown programming language.
WASM, if it allows to run high level languages like c#/vb/python/java, will enable a huge developer base to start writing truly cross platform, productive apps with a single code base. So it would be a solution to a fundamental technical problem: the fragmentation and incompatibility of proprietary platforms.
As a side, it would have another benefit (which would make it even less palatable to Apple but should motivate Microsoft to develop a CLR for WASM): as the apps would be cross platform, it would lower the barrier to entry for alternative mobile platforms. If the same app compiled to WASM runs on every platform, a Windows mobile OS (or any other challenger) would immediately have access to the same apps that are available for iOS or Android.
WASM is not positioning itself as a high-level application development platform. It's specifically meant to co-exist with ECMAScript (which is the app "glue"). It's meant to out-source computationally-intensive functions to, nothing more.
If you embrace only the good / modern parts of ES6/ES7, you can really write elegant, modern, functional-style code. Not sure there is much left to complain about, other than the lack of built-in type system, which many others (but certainly not me) argue is a good thing.
The end user won't benefit from the portability aspect, though. He/she has to load the damn app anew on every device and every session.
I'm not against portable bytecodes (though I find it pointless, and proven to have failed in the past); it's the mating to the Web that I'm concerned with, and the infinite potential for tracking and other privacy invasion.
To bring portability in a meaningful way, Apple and Google have to agree on a common API for touch, phoning, GPS, USB, power management, proximity, NFC, UI. Not going to happen.
So why bring yet another avenue for tracking and malware to browsers? To top it, lets base it on C and SIMD primitives. Lets ditch HTML and draw to a canvas all the time, accesibility, hyperlinking, etc. be damned. Because we don't like JavaScript.
