Add FAQ on java and .net virtual machines #1061
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FAQ.md
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| @@ -242,6 +242,16 @@ generate WebAssembly code from C and C++, and will use LLVM IR in their | |||
| implementation similarly to how PNaCl and Emscripten do today. | |||
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| ## Why not use the .net or jvm virtual machines and bytecodes? | |||
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.NET should be all caps.
JVM virtual machines is redundant (java virtual machine virtual machines). I suggest changing "jvm" to "Java".
FAQ.md
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| Simply, web browsers already have their own virtual machines for executing | ||
| platform-independent code, and integrating the existing infrastructure of .net | ||
| or the jvm into browser environments on top of these existing systems would | ||
| incur massive costs for end-users. Also, the design goals in jvm and .net's |
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"costs" could be misinterpreted as a monetary expense, which although being a legitimate fear given the history of both Java and .NET, would be unlikely. Regardless, I'd like to see a less ambiguous word or phrase here, but not sure what it would be...
Also, JVM and .NET should be all caps.
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Thanks @RyanLamansky, @chicoxyzzy; updated. |
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One thing that's worth mentioning is the abstraction layer that WebAssembly operates at versus other VMs. The bytecode doesn't know about higher-level language constructs, and the hope is that these can be layered on top of a WebAssembly VM. Mentioning that we already have JS VMs isn't super relevant: in all cases we don't reuse JS-isms in our bytecodes, we fast-forward to our static-typed optimizers. |
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Agreed with @jfbastien, existing JS VMs are not particularly relevant. The real reason is that other VMs and IRs do not meet the design goals defined for Wasm. You can find relevant discussion in our paper (Sections 1 and 8 in particular): https://github.com/WebAssembly/spec/blob/master/papers/pldi2017.pdf |
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Thanks for the help, I'll work to adjust the wording a bit. |
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FWIW somebody at Microsoft got an .NET interpreter running on WebAssembly as an experiment: https://github.com/SteveSanderson/Blazor |
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Hey, was just going through my open pull requests, is this outdated? I could make a patch for the current HEAD with any necessary changes if so. Otherwise we could close it. |
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Closing due to age and lack of activity |
Figured I'd have a go at #960.