document browser, document reader, printed paper, paper form, return to sender... those are all in the same concept space*

"virtual machine" is clearly not

that said, i love WASM in the browser, high time wrapping media with code to become "new media" wasn't stuck solely with a choice between JS and "plugins" like Java, Flash, or Silverlight

it's interesting to look back at a few "what might have been" alternate timelines, when the iPhone was intended to launch as an HTML app platform, or Palm Pre (under a former Apple exec, the "pod-father") intended the same with WebOS. if a VM running a web OS shows a PDF or HTML viewer in a frame, versus if a HTML viewer shows a VM running a web OS in a frame...

we're still working on figuring out whether new media and software distribution are the same.

today, writing Swift, or Nim, or whatever LLVM, and getting WASM -- I agree with you, feels like a collective convergence on the next step of common denominator

* note: those are all documents and document workflows with skeuomorphic analogs in the same headspace, and newspaper with "live pictures" has been a sci-fi trope for long enough TV news still can't bring themselves to say "video" (reminding us "movie" is to "moving" as "talkie" was to "talking") so extending document to include "media" is reasonable. but extending that further to be "arbitrary software" is no longer strictly document nor media