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  5. Java vs WebAssembly

Java vs WebAssembly

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Java
Java
Stacks148.0K
Followers105.5K
Votes3.7K
WebAssembly
WebAssembly
Stacks223
Followers218
Votes0
GitHub Stars8.2K
Forks818

Java vs WebAssembly: What are the differences?

Introduction

Java and WebAssembly are two different programming technologies used for building web applications. While Java is a high-level general-purpose programming language, WebAssembly is a binary instruction format for a stack-based virtual machine.

Key differences between Java and WebAssembly

  1. Language Syntax: Java uses a syntax similar to C and C++, with its own object-oriented programming features. On the other hand, WebAssembly is a low-level language, with a more compact and efficient binary format.

  2. Platform Independence: Java is designed to be platform-independent, thanks to the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) that allows Java programs to run on any operating system. WebAssembly, on the other hand, is designed to be cross-platform compatible and can be executed in any modern web browser.

  3. Performance: Java programs are executed by the JVM, which can introduce some overhead and impact performance. WebAssembly, being a low-level language, can be directly executed by the browser's virtual machine, resulting in better performance compared to Java.

  4. Memory Management: In Java, memory management is handled by the Java Virtual Machine through automatic garbage collection. WebAssembly, on the other hand, does not have a built-in garbage collector and requires explicit memory management.

  5. Development Ecosystem: Java has a mature and extensive development ecosystem, with numerous libraries, frameworks, and tools available. WebAssembly is a relatively newer technology and has a more limited ecosystem, although it continues to grow.

  6. Use Cases: Java is widely used for developing enterprise-level applications, Android apps, and server-side programming. WebAssembly, on the other hand, is primarily used for running client-side applications in the web browser, including intensive computations and games.

In summary, Java and WebAssembly differ in their language syntax, platform independence, performance, memory management, development ecosystem, and use cases.

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Advice on Java, WebAssembly

Erik
Erik

Chief Architect at LiveTiles

May 18, 2020

Decided

C# and .Net were obvious choices for us at LiveTiles given our investment in the Microsoft ecosystem. It enabled us to harness of the .Net framework to build ASP.Net MVC, WebAPI, and Serverless applications very easily. Coupled with the high productivity of Visual Studio, it's the native tongue of Microsoft technology.

614k views614k
Comments
Nick
Nick

Building cool things on the internet 🛠️ at Stream

Sep 5, 2019

Review

I work at Stream and I'm immensely proud of what our team is working on here at the company. Most recently, we announced our Android SDK accompanied by an extensive tutorial for Java and Kotlin. The tutorial covers just about everything you need to know when it comes to using our Android SDK for Stream Chat. The Android SDK touches many features offered by Stream Chat – more specifically, typing status, read state, file uploads, threads, reactions, editing messages, and commands. Head over to https://getstream.io/tutorials/android-chat/ and give it a whirl!

176k views176k
Comments
Ido
Ido

Mar 6, 2020

Decided

When developing a new blockchain, we as a team chose Go lang over Java and other candidates, due to Go being (a) natively suited to concurrency - there are primitives in the language itself (goroutines, channels) that really help with reasoning about concurrency (b) super fast - build time, running, testing are all much faster that Java, this gives a far superior developer experience (c) shorter and stricter than Java - code is much shorter (less verbose), and there is usually one good way to do things, and even the code formatter that is bundled with Go is very opinionated - over a short time this makes reading other people's code far smoother than having to deal with different styles.

You should be aware that Go presently (v1.13) lacks Generics.

267k views267k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Java
Java
WebAssembly
WebAssembly

Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!

It is an open standard that defines a portable binary code format for executable programs, and a corresponding textual assembly language, as well as interfaces for facilitating interactions between such programs and their host environment.

-
Efficient and fast; Safe; Open and debuggable; Part of the open web platform
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
8.2K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
818
Stacks
148.0K
Stacks
223
Followers
105.5K
Followers
218
Votes
3.7K
Votes
0
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 608
    Great libraries
  • 446
    Widely used
  • 401
    Excellent tooling
  • 396
    Huge amount of documentation available
  • 334
    Large pool of developers available
Cons
  • 33
    Verbosity
  • 27
    NullpointerException
  • 17
    Nightmare to Write
  • 16
    Overcomplexity is praised in community culture
  • 12
    Boiler plate code
Cons
  • 2
    Security issues
Integrations
Spring
Spring
Rust
Rust
C++
C++
C lang
C lang

What are some alternatives to Java, WebAssembly?

JavaScript

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

Python

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

PHP

PHP

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Ruby

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Golang

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

HTML5

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

Scala

Scala

Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.

Elixir

Elixir

Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain.

Swift

Swift

Writing code is interactive and fun, the syntax is concise yet expressive, and apps run lightning-fast. Swift is ready for your next iOS and OS X project — or for addition into your current app — because Swift code works side-by-side with Objective-C.

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