The official FAQ specifically states the opposite of the second bullet point.<p>Web Assembly is not meant to be a replacement for JavaScript. And although the blog doesn't explicitly say it, it's alluding to it being easy to create entire applications without using JavaScript at all.<p>JavaScript is going to continue to be used as "glue code" at the very least, and UI code in the majority of cases. I think it's really important to make this distinction.<p>Trying to use web assembly as a solution to problems it's explicitly not meant to solve is only going to lead to pain and frustration.<p>Furthermore, things like "static type checking", easy functional programming, and making application coding "less painful" aren't really goals as the post seems to make them out to be as well.
If the author states that there are already a number of Hello World examples, why not spend a bit more time and create something else that's still simple enough?<p>As a self-taught programmer, one of the difficulties I found (before SO) was that the many articles one read up on would typically repeat what someone else said. This especially with new technologies.<p>I think if authors pointed us to an existing "Hello World", and then expanded on that, in the long-run, beginners would sometimes find it easier to learn fadter.
I'm really surprised to read an article like this that doesn't mention Rust. The reason is that I find it hard to believe that developers will want to move to unsafe languages like C/C++. Many of the other languages mentioned require runtimes, runtimes that will need to be built on top of webassembly.<p>Rust doesn't have any of these drawbacks, is runtime free, and can already target webassembly. Given that both of these technologies are young, webassembly even younger, there's no big argument for legacy code in this context, which means adopting something new would be fine, and good in this case because of the safety guarantees.<p>Anyway, a great intro in general, but for anyone looking at getting into this, I highly recommend checking out the Rust tutorials, like this one: <a href="https://medium.com/@ianjsikes/get-started-with-rust-webassembly-and-webpack-58d28e219635" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/@ianjsikes/get-started-with-rust-webassem...</a>
I like the idea of WebAssembly too; it is another kind of VM code. However, is there a C API to WebAssembly? Having a JavaScript API that is usable in both HTML and Node.js (and could easily be added to any other JavaScript too) is good, but a C API can also help (and I have written on some file on my computer what are some ideas for making a C API).<p>(I did not read the linked document much though, but only the official FAQ. However I do think you would not use WebAssembly all the time, but it can be helpful in some cases, including wanting VM codes.)