This is cool! But this suffers from multiple translations:

actual_cpu(browser_sandbox(wasm(x86_emulator(python_interpret(python source)))))

Is there some way to do a more direct JIT in wasm? Or maybe just a normal python interpreter written in wasm? Or would that not be faster?

apignotti

The point of this technology is generality. It is theoretically possible, given enough work, run Python directly in Wasm. The effort would be, though, Python specific and you would need to start from scratch for every single language.

CheerpX allows running unmodified X86 programs, it does not matter if it's Python or something else. It does not even have to be a REPL, for that matter. We use this tech in production to run the legacy Flash plugin, for example: https://leaningtech.com/cheerpx-for-flash/

AkshitGarg

> given enough work, run Python directly in Wasm

It is already possible! See https://github.com/pyodide/pyodide

tyingq

That's via emscripten. I suspect by "directly" they meant something like Python bytecode -> WASM. Which I think might be possible later, when some of the proposals[1] like GC, exceptions, etc, are done. That sort of fuzzy line where WASM is somewhat like ASM, and somewhat like a language VM.

[1] https://github.com/WebAssembly/proposals