Believe it or not, back in the 90s we thought (on the whole) that web browsers were for browsing hypertext documents. Not for replacing the operating system. There's a reason JS started out limited to basic scripting functionality for wiring up e.g. on-click handlers and form validation. That it grew into something else is not indicative of any design fault in JS (tho it has plenty), but with the use it was shoehorned into. The browser as delivery mechanism for the types of things you're talking about is... not what Tim Berners Lee or even Marc Andreesen had in mind?
Back then "the network is the computer" people ended up shipping thin X clients: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Computer in order to do richer applications.
I have very mixed feelings about WASM. There is a large... hype-and-novelty screen held up in front of it right now.
There are many Bad Things about treating the web browser as nothing more than a viewport for whatever UI designer and SWE language-of-the-wek fantasy is going around. Especially when we get into things like accessibility, screen readers, etc.
As for the people treating WASM as the universal VM system outside the browser... Yeah, been down that road 30 years ago, that's what the JVM was supposed to be? But I understand that's not "cool" now, so...
Sigh.
Back then "the network is the computer" people ended up shipping thin X clients: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Computer in order to do richer applications.
I have very mixed feelings about WASM. There is a large... hype-and-novelty screen held up in front of it right now.
There are many Bad Things about treating the web browser as nothing more than a viewport for whatever UI designer and SWE language-of-the-wek fantasy is going around. Especially when we get into things like accessibility, screen readers, etc.
As for the people treating WASM as the universal VM system outside the browser... Yeah, been down that road 30 years ago, that's what the JVM was supposed to be? But I understand that's not "cool" now, so...
Sigh.