This is not true. There were alternative implementations from very early on, most notably the Microsoft one.
> ...and had many security issues during its life.
True, but WASM hadn't had much of a life so far, so we will see.
> And its communication with the rest of the browser was done through a slow and ugly channel (IIRC everything had to be sent around as strings).
From what I understand, so far, every communication between the browser and WASM has to go through JavaScript and from what I see I think it's ugly as well[1].
Don't get me wrong, I'm not at all against WASM, but I see the very same arguments for and against WASM I remember from the 90s about Java. This is especially true when it comes to security. Java was designed with a sandbox and a bytecode verifier from very early on.
[1] https://kripken.github.io/emscripten-site/docs/porting/conne...
My bad. However it was closed source too, and abandoned rather quickly.
> True but WASM hadn't had much of a life so far, so we will see.
It uses the same security model as JS, which is much more mature than VMs not designed for so much exposure to random third party code.
> from what I see I think it's ugly as well
Ugly but not slow. WASM memory can be read and written directly from/to a typed array, instead of converting strings. Since it's fast enough, one can make less ugly APIs wrapping that behaviour.
> Java was designed with a sandbox and a bytecode verifier from very early on.
They probably protected the code itself from escaping the sandbox, but not the environment (all the API in its complex glory). WASM on the other side is exclusively allowed to talk with JS (for now, at least), therefore the only API level bugs are in JS, not in WASM.
> WASM provides the basic technology for loading and authenticating signed code. This enables browsers to run trusted code in a trusted environment.
Sounds familiar? This is straight from 1998 [1](ha!) with JDK replaced by WASM and applet/classes by code;-) I hear you and I hope this is enough for WASM to succeed. Still I don't see the killer argument why I should believe it will.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/19980214233937/http://java.sun.c...
