As was announced yesterday, WebAssembly language (replacing asm.js) is seriously real. Here's a FAQ https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/master/FAQ.md#faq
And Brendan Eich: https://brendaneich.com/2015/06/from-asm-js-to-webassembly/ There is still hope for JS itself, however. JS can import wasm: Is WebAssembly only for C/C++ programmers? As explained in the high-level goals <https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/master/HighLevelGoals.md>, to achieve a Minimum Viable Product, the initial focus is on C/C++ <https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/master/CAndC++.md>. However, byintegrating with JS at the ES6 Module interface <https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/master/MVP.md#modules>, web developers don't need to write C++ to take advantage of libraries that others have written; reusing a modular C++ library can be as simple as using a module from JS <http://jsmodules.io/>. Beyond the MVP, another high-level goal <https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/master/HighLevelGoals.md> is to improve support for languages other than C/C++. This includes allowing WebAssembly code to allocate and access garbage-collected (JS, DOM, Web API) objects <https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/master/FutureFeatures.md#gcdom-integration>. Even before GC support is added to WebAssembly, it is possible to compile a language's VM to WebAssembly (assuming it's written in portable C/C++) and this has already been demonstrated (1 <http://ruby.dj/>, 2 <https://kripken.github.io/lua.vm.js/lua.vm.js.html>, 3 <https://syntensity.blogspot.com/2010/12/python-demo.html>). However, "compile the VM" strategies increase the size of distributed code, lose browser devtools integration, can have cross-language cycle-collection problems and miss optimizations that require integration with the browser. My guess is that Java or GWT (Google Web Toolkit) will eventually be able compile to wasm. So you're right again, Frank! -- Owen
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