Hacker GitHub

← All repos

WebAssembly/design

View on GitHub ↗ ★ 11,635

WebAssembly Design Documents

260 mentions on Hacker News by 196 people: 15 stories, 245 comments · first 2015-06-17 · latest 2026-05-03

Mentions per year 260 mentions · busiest year 2016 (66)
20082026
AllStoriesComments NewestTopOldest
  1. …determinism is partly possible because WebAssembly is deterministic (except for a few known cases https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/main/Nondetermini... ), and partly because I’m making sure to use my own trigonometric functions,…
    comment by BSTRhino · 2026-05-03 · in A physics engine with incremental rollback for multiplayer games
  2. …GC also doesn't support multi-threading yet. Some of this is supposed to be fixed by things like https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/1569 and WASI lowering to GC types. stringref would have been great, but that appears to be dead…
    comment by spankalee · 2026-03-08 · in Notes on writing Rust-based Wasm
  3. …this is why we need deterministic wasm derivations!" - Me (There you go Ericson) Relevant links: https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/main/Nondetermini...
    comment by huem0n · 2025-10-31 · in Nix Derivation Madness
  4. Does this allow for shrinking the WebAssembly.Memory object? - https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/1397 - https://github.com/WebAssembly/memory-control/issues/6 This is a crucial issue, as the released memory is still allocated by…
    comment by baxuz · 2025-09-17 · in WASM 3.0 Completed
  5. …seems equivalent to vint64 ) for WebAssembly, but it was decided against, in favor of LEB128: https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/601 The recent CREL format for ELF also uses the more established LEB128:…
    comment by haberman · 2025-09-05 · in Protobuffers Are Wrong (2018)
  6. …to gzip or brotli (though the gains are much smaller for brotli since it's so good to begin with): https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/1180
    comment by kevingadd · 2025-07-14 · in Lossless Float Image Compression
  7. See for example https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/1463 In general, if NaN1 and NaN2 are different (there are 23 bits in a NaN that can be set to an arbitrary value, the NaN payload) then combining them isn’t deterministic. NaN1…
    comment by xmcqdpt2 · 2025-04-10 · in Show HN: Obelisk – a WASM-based deterministic workflow engine
  8. …a discussion with some explanations to why that is and what other solutions could be looked at: https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/1184
    comment by dgb23 · 2024-07-09 · in Dynamic translation of Smalltalk to WebAssembly
  9. …has ICF, they will not bother supporting such cases, so it will be done by a much slower fallback: https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/796#issuecommen... AFAIK no other Wasm implementation has the same constraint - the rest…
    comment by int_19h · 2024-02-20 · in WASM Instructions
  10. https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/1397 > Currently allocating more than ~300MB of memory is not reliable on Chrome on Android without resorting to Chrome-specific workarounds, nor in Safari on iOS. That's about allocating CPU…
    comment by jsheard · 2024-01-16 · in Web AI Model Testing: WebGPU, WebGL, and Headless Chrome
  11. …in the days when WASM wasn't widely supported. "Please add goto" issue has been open since 2016: https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/796 Most interesting comment: > The upcoming Go 1.11 release will have experimental support for…
    comment by andai · 2023-12-11 · in Build your own WebAssembly Compiler (2019)
  12. …the cacheline/address level. [1] covers the major design limitations with WebAssembly memory. [1] https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/1397
    comment by zbjornson · 2023-11-12 · in How we built a spreadsheet editor 5x faster than Google Sheets
  13. …Bernard's work on Lunatic so I'm incredibly excited to see he's tackling these hard problems. [1] https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/main/Nondetermini... [2] https://github.com/drifting-in-space/wasmbox/tree/main
    comment by paulgb · 2023-10-25 · in Flawless – Durable execution engine for Rust
  14. …math is deterministic. See https://webassembly.org/docs/faq/#why-is-there-no-fast-math-... and https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/main/Nondetermini... .
    comment by kodablah · 2023-10-25 · in Flawless – Durable execution engine for Rust
  15. …native code that holds a GC reference would either mark that reference as a root explicitly (eg. https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/1459 ) or ensure that it can be traced from a parent object. Either way, this should prevent…
    comment by haberman · 2023-10-19 · in Requiem for a stringref
  16. …like the vendors are recognizing this though, with firefox now having a discard function aparently! https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/1397
    comment by vouwfietsman · 2023-03-24 · in The tug-of-war over server-side WebAssembly
  17. …already assuming this and trying to write a version of React running in WASM already. [1] https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/main/Web.md#gc
    comment by no_circuit · 2023-01-18 · in Bun v0.5
  18. …limbo about freeing memory. A great issue documenting a lot of the pain points around this is here: https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/1397 Until this is solved WASM is dead in the water for a huge variety of applications. I am…
    comment by fayten · 2022-07-17 · in Why am I excited about WebAssembly?
  19. …in wasm 1.0 and leave those things for later. Both are being discussed now. For the first see e.g. https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/1397 For the second, WASI is doing that on the server, while on the Web we just haven't found a…
    comment by azakai · 2022-07-13 · in Zig and WASM
  20. …has quite a few problems, but they're at least different problems than the ones applets had. 1. https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/a19e4ccf9c250cc73...
    comment by shadowofneptune · 2022-06-23 · in Introducing PyScript (summary of PyCon keynote)
  21. …engine for WebAssembly is going to have to deal with the mess of web standards, unfortunately. 1. https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/755
    comment by shadowofneptune · 2022-06-22 · in What will a Chromium-only Web look like?
  22. ▲ 17
    Should WebAssembly consider compatibility with the Open Web Platform important?
    story by lioeters · 2022-03-11 · 2 comments
  23. …from WebAssembly without calling through JavaScript”, and WASM’s high level goals document < https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/main/HighLevelGoa... > lists “access browser functionality through the same Web APIs that are…
    comment by chrismorgan · 2022-02-01 · in Pay attention to WebAssembly
  24. That's fascinating thread, thanks: https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/148
    comment by simonbyrne · 2021-11-13 · in Beware of fast-math
  25. I found this thread quite interesting on that topic: https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/1397
    comment by ffhhj · 2021-10-11 · in Ask HN: What excites you today (technologically speaking)?
  26. ▲ 1
    WASM needs a better memory management story
    story by noch · 2021-09-28 · 0 comments
  27. ▲ 4
    Unity: WASM needs a better memory management story
    story by arduinomancer · 2021-09-24 · 0 comments
  28. ▲ 4
    WASM needs a better memory management story
    story by noch · 2021-09-24 · 0 comments
  29. …* https://github.com/WebAssembly/interface-types/issues/136 * https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/1419
    comment by syrusakbary · 2021-07-25 · in An Urgent Notice from AssemblyScript
  30. …video formats. One thing that's an issue in that regard is trust, but there's an issue for that: https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/1413 .
    comment by yarg · 2021-06-30 · in The web browser I'm dreaming of
  31. It has been discussed but you're right it won't be any time soon: https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/273
    comment by octopoc · 2021-06-26 · in Microsoft Teams 2 will use half the memory, dropping Electron for Edge Webview2
  32. …as you don't touch NaN and stick to one thread, you'll get the same results in any runtime [1]. [1] https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/main/Nondetermini...
    comment by cylon13 · 2021-06-17 · in Wasmer 2.0
  33. …in those meetings and were in smaller groups or held in GitHub issues or PRs. Most of these were in https://github.com/webassembly/design .
    comment by binji · 2021-06-05 · in Pokegb: A gameboy emulator that only plays Pokémon Blue, in 68 lines of C++
  34. …a hobbyist like me, WebAssembly makes the minefield of multiplayer so much easier to navigate. [0]: https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/master/Nondetermi... [1] A blog post on rollback netcode (not in wasm):…
    comment by GreedCtrl · 2021-02-28 · in WebAssembly
  35. …the modern web was built on a language designed in 10 days, so I shouldn't complain, should I. [1] https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/master/MVP.md [2] https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/master/HighLevelG... [3]…
    comment by dmitriid · 2021-01-06 · in Wasmer 1.0
  36. Perhaps it's time to revisit jit extensions for webassembly [0]. [0]: https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/master/FutureFeat...
    comment by nynx · 2021-01-05 · in Show HN: CheerpX – x86 Node.js/python3/Ruby REPL in browser via WebAssembly JIT
  37. …may be interested to read this, which talks about a proposal to add additional stack instructions: https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/1381
    comment by foota · 2020-12-07 · in Sugar – a typed lispy language targeting webasm/wat
  38. …a few years/decades from now, we will be remembering the day WebAssembly was announced. [1] 1: https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/150
    comment by ibraheemdev · 2020-12-04 · in Netscape and Sun Announce JavaScript (1995)
  39. Agreed that the WebAssembly spec is a pain to read. I mostly used this outdated doc: https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/master/BinaryEnco... Generating C seems like a good middle ground. I also considered that. Frankly though code…
    comment by hardwaregeek · 2020-11-09 · in Making a programming language using Rust
  40. …this was the case for WebAssembly. I found a discussion about it amongst the WebAssembly designers. https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/204 -- Looks like efficient implementation of mprotect() was a sticking point, and its been…
    comment by rezonant · 2020-08-14 · in Benign data races considered harmful
  41. …can use WebAssembly all you want you will never be able to implement flash.net.DatagramSocket [0]: https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/1251 [1]: https://github.com/emscripten-core/emscripten/issues/5196
    comment by zwetan · 2020-05-28 · in Nitrome to convert its Flash game library to HTML5
  42. WebAssembly allows deterministic execution (with caveats: https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/master/Nondetermi... ) of any code. I think it is a perfect platform for such type of testing.
    comment by mfateev · 2020-05-24 · in Testing Distributed Systems with Deterministic Simulation (2014) [video]
  43. …you consider a stack machine. BTW the designers of WASM explicitly call WASM a stack machine here: https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/master/Rationale.... . With WASM's MVP it was necessary to store e.g. loop state in local…
    comment by readittwice · 2020-04-28 · in What’s in that .wasm? Introducing wasm-decompile
  44. …some techniques emscripten employed). The design rationale is right there in the spec repository: https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/master/Rationale.... It was built to be a better target than asm.js for compiled languages to run…
    comment by tedmielczarek · 2020-04-28 · in What’s in that .wasm? Introducing wasm-decompile
  45. …ground, with the understanding that "more expressive control flow" was expected to be added later: https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/master/FutureFeat...
    comment by sunfish · 2020-02-24 · in Why does WebAssembly need the relooper algorithm, instead of gotos? (2019)
  46. …involved were not Google employees at the time of the decision (I don't know if they are now): https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/33 https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/44 I definitely recall that people had…
    comment by kevingadd · 2020-02-24 · in Why does WebAssembly need the relooper algorithm, instead of gotos? (2019)
  47. …(which are the result of a bad design, not unstructured control flow). In the big GitHub Issue ( https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/796 ) on the topic, one of the core V8 developers even claims that the Java experience justifies…
    comment by cwzwarich · 2020-02-23 · in Why does WebAssembly need the relooper algorithm, instead of gotos? (2019)
  48. For the reasoning behind this, see https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/master/FAQ.md#why...
    comment by AndrewDucker · 2019-12-16 · in WASM as a Platform for Abstraction
  49. …Wasm still assumes little-endian byte ordering. Honestly who really cares about big-endian? https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/master/Portabilit...
    comment by kbumsik · 2019-12-16 · in WASM as a Platform for Abstraction
  50. …if you open it. file protocol is basically being deprecated by chrome for stupid security reasons: https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/1200
    comment by est31 · 2019-12-14 · in Show HN: Browser-based PowerPoint alternative