For the past two decades, JavaScript has been the sole programming language natively supported in web browsers. During this time, the rise and fall of third-party plug-ins, such as Java and Flash’s ActionScript, have made it clear that web development would remain firmly in JavaScript’s domain. Other languages, like CoffeeScript, only served to compile into JavaScript rather than offering an alternative. This has kept web development constrained to a single language, limiting the performance and capabilities of web applications in some cases.
However, the landscape is changing with the advent of WebAssembly, or Wasm. WebAssembly is a compact, fast binary format that provides near-native execution speed for web applications. Its key feature is that it is designed to serve as a compilation target for virtually any programming language, with JavaScript being just one of the many options. This opens the door for developers to write client-side applications in other languages like C, C++, or Rust, and then compile them to WebAssembly for use in the browser, without relying solely on JavaScript.
With full support for WebAssembly now integrated into all major web browsers, the time is ripe for developers to explore its potential. WebAssembly brings the promise of high-performance applications, enabling web apps to run more efficiently, especially for compute-heavy tasks. It’s a breakthrough that allows developers to write code in languages they may already be comfortable with, or those that are more suited to the task at hand, and execute it in the browser with speeds previously reserved for native applications.
While WebAssembly does not aim to replace JavaScript, it is a powerful companion. JavaScript continues to be ideal for dynamic, flexible tasks thanks to its loose typing and ease of development with human-readable code. WebAssembly, on the other hand, excels in performance-intensive scenarios. It is strongly typed and delivered in a binary format, making it highly efficient for demanding applications like games, video editing, music streaming, and CAD tools. Many leading web services have already adopted WebAssembly to enhance their performance, with companies like Google Earth and Figma benefiting from reduced load times and faster execution. As the web continues to evolve, WebAssembly is emerging as a critical technology for the next generation of web applications.