wasm makes using a statically-typed language possible in web applications. For those that have embraced JS, that may not be compelling but for those of us that prefer strong, static typing it is a positive development.
I'm using typescript, so I already have a statically-typed language for my web apps. What is compelling with WASM is that it lets me provide a web-browser version of my C++ libraries, for stuff which needs decent execution speed and cannot afford a GC.
Look at the comment I was responding to: I wasn’t claiming there weren’t other ways to do this. I was responding to the question as to why you might use wasm over JS. I understand it was based on previous efforts like asm.js.
Also, for several languages, specifically those based on LLVM, the path to wasm is much clearer than compiling to JS.
