WebAssembly And The Future of JavaScript

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JavaScript brought interactivity to the web more than 20 years ago, and despite numerous challengers, it is still the only language supported by browser. However, as those 20 years have passed we've moved from adding a little interactivity to largely static sites, to creating complex JavaScript-heavy single page applications. Throughout this journey, the way we use JavaScript itself has also changed. Gone are the days of writing simple code snippets that are run directly in the browser. Nowadays you transpile, minify, tree-shake and more, treating the JavaScript virtual machine as a compilation target.

The problem is, JavaScript isn't a very good compilation target, because it simply wasn't designed to be one. Born out of asm.js, a somewhat crazy concept dreamt up by Mozilla, WebAssembly was designed from the ground-up as an efficient compilation target for the web. It promises smaller payloads, rapid parsing and validation and consistent performance... and it's ready to use, right now! During this talk you will learn about what's wrong with the way you are using JavaScript today and why you need WebAssembly. It will delve into the internals, giving a quick tour of the WebAssembly instruction set, memory and security model, before moving on to the more practical aspects of using it with Rust, C++ and JavaScript. Finally you'll do some crystal-ball gazing and see what the future of this rapidly evolving technology might hold.

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