Web Embeddable Common Lisp

Is WASM a good target for REPL-driven programming? I haven't studied it in detail, but I do remember that it was Harvard architecture. Would that mean that code can't be updated at runtime in real implementations?

I'd use the analogy of current dynamic language VMs being written C. You're not modifying structs at runtime or creating C functions as a user of the dynamic language. But the creators of the VM are providing as thin a layer as possible on top of that to give the runtime behavior it's dynamism.

There's an often repeated line that WebAssembly isn't really "assembly" and it's not "web". There's a lot of truth to that. I dove in hoping for a cross platform, web enabled assembly. It looks a lot like an assembly but I find it's relatively few restrictions like lack of a true jump command rippling out more than one would have expected. It's also sortuva stack machine and sortuva register machine at the same time.

It does share a lot with the internal VMs in many places like the JVM, Python's VM, .net, etc.