Comment by Panzerschrek
4 days ago
Programs written in Java require installation of a middleware called Java runtime. It adds extra friction for end-users. And even if one has Java runtime installed, a newer version may be necessary for a recently-published application.
With WASM it may be the same, unless al major OS vendors integrate a WASM runtime so that it doesn't need to be installed separately.
It is exactly the same for WASM outside of the browser, and Java has Android as counter part to built in runtime.
Yes, but inside the browser is a freaking big use case.
Not really, I don't need COM / CORBA on the browser.
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Java's vm does not start in milliseconds nor has dozen independent implementations in every ecosystem
Folks tend to think only Oracle does Java, and the only place to get it is from https://www.java.com.
Maybe they should broaden their horizons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Java_virtual_machines
And some like PTC or microEJ are missing from the list.
>And even if one has Java runtime installed, a newer version may be necessary for a recently-published application.
WASM doesn't remove version churn, the linked article literally discusses a newer version. Oh and the wonderful web compat story.
> It adds extra friction for end-users
It doesn't have to, the program can bundle its own jre as its often the case, and then you also don't have to worry about jre compatibility. Downside is then you have many jres installed and of course you can't trust their sandboxing.
> Programs written in Java require installation of a middleware called Java runtime. It's possible to link or embed a Java runtime in an existing application.