At the risk of jumping into this, Java was intended to be small (small enough to run on processors that were below PC-class in the 1990s) and embeddable.
The idea of Java running on devices goes back AFAICR to the very beginning of the language. I remember the "Java everywhere" slogan and initiatives to put Java into every device. Java Card was a version of Java designed to run on smart cards. If memory serves, these were all design goals of the Java platform in the early 90s.
(Remarkably, this was all well before Linux really took off, before the Internet was ubiquitous, and when the most sophisticated electronics most households owned was a VHS player.)
There is indeed a risk that Wasm will end up bloated and fail at its main purpose.
Supporters hope that the web process will prevent excessive features. Actually the dual presence JS/wams will reduce the pressure on JS to be a strong compilation target.
I agree that (almost) no single aspect of wasm is new, but it has a lot of good points.
https://www.javaworld.com/article/2073700/mobile-java/mobile...
The idea of Java running on devices goes back AFAICR to the very beginning of the language. I remember the "Java everywhere" slogan and initiatives to put Java into every device. Java Card was a version of Java designed to run on smart cards. If memory serves, these were all design goals of the Java platform in the early 90s.
(Remarkably, this was all well before Linux really took off, before the Internet was ubiquitous, and when the most sophisticated electronics most households owned was a VHS player.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Card