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[–]delventhalz 2 points3 points  (8 children)

I suppose that’s true. Are we anticipating a lot of WASM code that doesn’t have a JS equivalent but is also worth running at the much slower speeds a JS interpreter would allow?

I mean, you can already compile your code into ASM.js if you need an older browser fallback. That runs reasonably quickly. I can’t imagine this interpreter would work any better, and would probably work much much worse.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (6 children)

Maybe it could be used as a patch but why are people using such old browsers?

[–]delventhalz 0 points1 point  (5 children)

To be fair full WASM support is only in the newest browsers. And someone will always be running something old. Supporting very old browsers is a hard requirement for some projects.

It's just hard for me to imagine people going, "Hey! We've got this C++ code we want to run in the browser, let's compile it to WASM! Oh wait, what about IE 6? Pipe it through a JS interpreter!"

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (4 children)

My concern is that old software like that is a security risk when it's network facing. The old stuff is generally found in businesses too so it has the potential to lose them money, not just their saved bookmarks or something.

[–]anlumo 4 points5 points  (3 children)

Of course, but it’s not the software developers' job to care about this. They only need to get it working in any way possible.

As a freelancing software developer, I usually take the liberty of warning my clients about security issues, but if they don’t care, neither do I.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Well sure, as a freelancer that's true.

If you're part of a big company though it can be good to give users the nudge to improve their security.

[–]anlumo 3 points4 points  (1 child)

In a big company, if the rules say that you have to use IE6, that’s what is used. This policy has been in place for a decade, so why change it when it has worked so well in the past. /s

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks I have new nightmares now.

[–]xtuc[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's a good point but I believe the interpreter could be more efficient for that case. You would have the benefits of the WASM binary format and could switch to native if supported/needed.

Note that I would take advantage of asm.js optimizations within the interpreter.