November 2022

Is It Time to Explore WebAssembly?

WebAssembly Is Fast and Lightweight

WebAssembly (WASM) is a low-level assembly language designed to be very close to compiled machine code and native performance. WASM was originally built for the browser, but, as the technology has matured, it is seeing more and more use cases on the server side.

Furthermore, in 2019, WebAssembly System Interface (WASI) was introduced to access operating system resources and to break WebAssembly out of the browser to help run back-end applications in a similar way.

As a result, developers are starting to push WebAssembly beyond the browser, because it provides a fast, scalable, secure way to run the same code across all machines.

The Docker cofounder, Solomon Hykes, said that if WASM+WASI had existed in 2008, we wouldn’t have needed to create Docker. This really means that WebAssembly is on the precipice of being as industry-changing as Docker was back in 2013.

Here is our monthly curated list of thought-provoking articles, blog posts, books, and videos on WebAssembly:

web-assembly-the-definite-guide

WebAssembly: The Definitive Guide

By Brian Sletten

A thorough and accessible introduction to one of the most interesting technologies gaining momentum.

What started as a way to use languages other than JavaScript in the browser has evolved into a comprehensive path toward portability, performance, increased security, and greater code reuse across an impressive collection of deployment targets.

bringing-the-web-up-to-speed-with-webassembly

Bringing the Web up to Speed with WebAssembly

By Michael Holman and JF Bastien

This is the original WebAssembly paper. Engineers from the four major browser vendors rose to the challenge and collaboratively designed a portable, low-level bytecode called WebAssembly.

Rather than committing to a specific programming model, WebAssembly is an abstraction over modern hardware, making it language-, hardware-, and platform-independent, with use cases beyond just the Web. WebAssembly has been designed with formal semantics from the start.

It offers compact representation, efficient validation and compilation, and safe low to no-overhead execution.

the-rise-of-webassembly

The Rise of WebAssembly

By Scott Carey

This article describes how, in just four short years, WebAssembly (WASM) has broken free of its origins as a useful browser-based technology and now powers some of the world’s most complex distributed applications, from streaming platforms like Disney+ to e-commerce powerhouse Shopify

WASM initially promised performance gains and greater portability for web applications, but now, it is making an impact across a growing number of environments.

what-is-webassembly-better-than-javascript

What Is WebAssembly and Is It Better Than JavaScript?

By Low Level Learning

You probably have heard of WebAssembly before, but do you really know what it is? What does it do? Is it better than Javascript?

These are questions discussed in this quick video.

webassembly-org-website

The WebAssembly Official Website

This is the official website for WebAssembly (abbreviated WASM).

“A binary instruction format for a stack-based virtual machine. WASM is designed as a portable compilation target for programming languages, enabling deployment on the web for client and server applications.”

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