Harnessing the Power of Web Assembly

Web Assembly (Wasm) promises to fundamentally change the power of web applications are built. This new web standard allows code written in languages like C++, C#, Go and Rust to run directly in the browser at native-like speeds.

Web applications have been built using HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

However, JavaScript has performance limitations due to its dynamic and loosely typed nature. As a result, JavaScript can be up to 1000x slower than native code for CPU-intensive tasks. This has made it unsuitable for demanding workloads like complex games, scientific modeling and machine learning.

However, Web Assembly aims to solve this performance issue. It provides a binary format that can represent low-level code in a memory-safe, sandboxed way. Web Assembly code is compiled to this format beforehand, then run in the browser using a dedicated virtual machine. This approach enables near native performance while also being secure and portable across browsers.

Rather than replacing JavaScript, Web Assembly is meant to complement it. JavaScript handles aspects like the user interface and interactions, while Web Assembly carries out intense processing. The two can then efficiently communicate and synchronize data. Further, existing JavaScript code can call functions exported by Web Assembly modules and vice versa.

The key benefit of Web Assembly is enabling high-performance functionality in the browser without plug-ins. Programmers can leverage native code, libraries and frameworks within the web. For example, game developers can port whole game engines to run natively inside web pages. Scientists could perform complex simulations entirely in the browser. Machine learning models could train and deploy as web applications.

A major use case is bringing C and C++ capabilities to the web. C/C++ are amongst the fastest languages, yet previously required browser plug-ins to run. With Web Assembly, C/C++ code can now generate a Wasm binary that runs stand-alone. This enables bringing native mobile and desktop apps to the power of web as Web Assembly applications.

Other popular languages like Rust, Go and .NET are also targeting Web Assembly.

In addition, they allow programmers to write once and deploy anywhere, without needing different transpilers. The entire ecosystem of these languages’ libraries and frameworks become available within browsers.

However, creating Web Assembly modules still requires knowledge of how to compile code to the binary format. Higher level APIs and transpilers aim to simplify this power of process through source-to-Wasm compilers. These allow devs to write code in familiar languages which is then convert to Web Assembly under the hood.

Overall, Web Assembly promises to vastly expand the range of performance and capabilities for web applications. It can enable everything from scientific visualizations to complex AR experiences entirely within browsers. As the ecosystem and tooling for Web Assembly matures, expect to see many innovative new applications built that were previously impossible in a web context.