Brendan Eich: WebAssembly is a game-changer
Personally, I think this is terrible (and it really is a game-changer, only not the kind that I'd be happy about). The further we get away from the web as a content delivery vehicle and more and more a delivery for executables that only run as long as you are on a page the more we will lose those things that made the web absolutely unique. For once the content was the important part, the reader was in control, for once universal accessibility was on the horizon and the peer-to-peer nature of the internet had half a chance of making the web a permanent read/write medium.It looks very much as if we're going to lose all of that to vertical data silos that will ship you half-an-app that you can't use without the associated service. We'll never really know what we lost.It's sad that we don't seem to be able to have the one without losing the other, theoretically it should be possible to do that but for some reason the trend is definitely in the direction of a permanent eradication of the 'simple' web where pages rather than programs were the norm.Feel free to call me a digital Luddite, I just don't think this is what we had in mind when we heralded the birth of the www.