embedded-scripting-languages VS wazero

Hopefully the linked README provides a general overview (I know I need to write some more documentation!), but Steel is an implementation of the scheme programming language (not entirely compliant yet, but aiming for R5RS and R7RS compliance). It can be used as a standalone language via the interpreter/repl (like Python or Racket), or it can be embedded inside applications, like Lua. There are hundreds (thousands, probably) of embeddable languages, each with their own flavor - see a list compiled here for example https://github.com/dbohdan/embedded-scripting-languages

Use cases are generally for either configuration, scripting, or plugins - so scripting in games, or adding extensions to your text editor without having to use FFI or RPC + serializing a bunch of data. The advantage it has over using dynamic libraries (in general) is it runs in the same process, and can access the internal data structures directly without a lot of ceremony involved. The downside is typically is not as fast as native code unless a JIT is involved.

Javascript is an example of an embedded scripting, where the browser is the host application.

> There is a huge opportunity, IMO, for more players here.

There are quite a few embeddable scripting languages [1]. I think these days it's less common to embed a language mostly because there are good high-level languages that applications can be predominantly written in.

[1] https://github.com/dbohdan/embedded-scripting-languages

I'm not a huge fan of Lua but I think it is at least way more popular and better on every measure than TCL. There are plenty of other better less well-known options too: Rhai, Wren, AngelScript, Starlark (for some use cases), etc. There's a good list here.

or perhaps use one of this list (depending on who's writing the configuration): https://github.com/dbohdan/embedded-scripting-languages

https://github.com/dbohdan/embedded-scripting-languages (coincidentally, from a user whose name I recognize from the Tcl wiki)

https://github.com/tetratelabs/wazero/releases/tag/v1.7.0

This includes the final release of the new optimizing compiler, which is a big improvement over the previous one.

The new version also adds experimental support for threads and snapshot/restore (setjmp/longjmp).

This is already being used by go-pgquery, all will mean that sqlc won't need to ship to almost copies of wazero (these features had been implemented on a friendly fork, and have now been up-streamed).

> Go actually has one of the best WASM runtimes https://github.com/tetratelabs/wazero

Wazero looks super cool. I saw somewhere that programs can be run with a timeout, which sounds great for sandboxing. The program input is just a slice of bytes [1], so an interesting use case would be to use something like Nats [2] to distribute programs to different servers. Super simple distributed computing!

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1: https://github.com/tetratelabs/wazero/blob/main/examples/bas...

2: https://natsbyexample.com/examples/messaging/pub-sub/go

It is slower.

The WASM runtime wazero [1] uses a compiler on amd64 and arm64 (on Linux, macOS, Windows, and FreeBSD), but the current compiler is very fast (at compiling), but very naive (generates less than optimal code).

An optimizing compiler is currently being developed, and should be released in the coming months. I'm optimistic that this compiler will cover the performance gap between WASM and modernc.

[1]: https://wazero.io

I am a fan of the Jacobin project! For your uses, you may also want to consider wazero [1], a pure-go WebAssembly runtime. Full disclosure: I am on the team :)

[1]: https://wazero.io/

No longer does Wasm/WASI need JS host! There are many spec-compliant runtimes built for environments from tiny embedded systems up to beefy arm/x86 racks:

- https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasm-micro-runtime

- https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime

- https://github.com/wasmerio/wasmer

- https://github.com/tetratelabs/wazero

- https://github.com/extism/extism (disclaimer, my company's project - makes wasm easily embeddable into 16+ programming languages!)

full disclosure: I don't work on it, but the devs are committers/contributors to https://wazero.io (I am a wazero committer) :)