w2c2 VS assemblyscript

For AOT, the simplest approach, that actually produces the fastest native code, is to naively translate WASM opcodes to C.

This is for example what W2C2 does: https://github.com/turbolent/w2c2

This uses [w2c2](https://github.com/turbolent/w2c2) to convert RustPython,

Incidentally, it’s also what AssemblyScript uses: https://github.com/AssemblyScript/assemblyscript/blob/main/s...

Use it as a Front-End for other low-level languages.

> MHO typescript could just cut loose from its javascript compatibility. Why not compile it to wasm instead of transpiling it to javascript?

Check out AssemblyScript which is exactly that:

https://www.assemblyscript.org/

If you're curious, check out AssemblyScript, that might describe better what needs to be cut from TypeScript to make it possible to be compiled to WASM.

This is kinda the idea behind AssemblyScript, but IIRC it's more of a low-level typescript-ish syntax for WebAssembly.

Exactly, WASM was designed to be very very lightweight... you can put a lot of logic into a very small amount of WASM, but you need a good compiler to do that, or write WASM by hand to really feel the benefit. If you just compile Go to WASM, with its GC, runtime and stdlib included in the binary, yeah it's going to be pretty heavy... Rust doesn't have a runtime but as you said, for some reason, produces relatively large binaries (not the case only in WASM by the way). Probably, the best ways to create small WASM binaries is to compile from C or from a WASM-native language like AssemblySCript (https://www.assemblyscript.org).

Well we have all the new ECMA standards that will be introduced in 5 years now. It's looking more like Java actually. its accessor and typing patterns match it the most. TypeScript has had quite the profound influence over future ECMA design. There is a not so well known project called AssemblyScript which I think has a promising future. Since future ecma standards closely resembles it and TypeScripts popularity has exploded I have a feeling it may become a real standard as well.

If you can guarantee that Typescript type hints will always be followed, you can turn it into more optimised code. Unfortunately, this means you've got to break Javascript semantics, so this means creating a new language, but people have done it. For example, AssemblyScript is a language that is designed as a strict subset of Typescript that compiles directly down to WebAssembly instead of Javascript, producing much more efficient code (most of the time). The tradeoff is that it has some slightly different semantics to Javascript, which means your existing codebase — and most of the libraries you use — will probably require some adaption before running correctly in AssemblyScript.

If you have heard of WASM, AssemblyScript allows you to use specific integer/floating point types and I think it's cool that they're using TypeScript syntax.

You can write the source code in C, C++, Rust, AssemblyScript, or something like this https://www.assemblyscript.org/.