Intro

I have recently been involved in creating a JS (javascript) Tic Tac Toe game that is playable in the browser. With that I have experienced the highs and the lows of JS as a language. I can hear the JS die hards now, waiting to raise their pitchforks in rebellion in what I might say next, but to be honest…all of the hardship I have experienced with JS has made me even more motivated to master it. I’ve even joined a local JS MeetUp. But, a part of me wondered, why has nothing come along to take JS’s place? That is until I came across the future of the web … WebAssembly. In this post I would like to discuss WebAssembly and what the future might hold for how we interact with the web.

Meet WebAssembly

If you think about our experience with the web it could probably be summed up with the idea of applications, web browsers, and hardware that allows us to connect to the internet in some form (ex. video game consoles). Through these three we can experience the world in different ways. But what if we could combine the three. What if all these experiences could be done directly through a web browser. This is what WebAssembly is trying to tackle.

Currently, WebAssembly allows developers to take C/C++ applications and compile it into a usable browser format. Get this, it can be done with nearly native speed! Welcome to the future Ladies and Gentlemen. Imagine a web where you can instantly load up your browser and immediately run an application at nearly native speeds.

The Future for Web Developers

As mentioned before, WebAssembly has the ability to take C/C++ applications so you can use them on the browser, but the promise is that more statically typed languages will join in the future. Imagine taking your code with the statically typed language of your choice and be able to upload it to the web to be used seamlessly without any issues. The browser would be our window to many interactive experiences where we will no longer need “an app for that.”

JS has served the internet well, and will probably continue to do so, but with WebAssembly, Web Applications will be taken into a very promising future, where all our online experiences with blend together into a web browser.

The fact that all major Web Browsers have been involved and plan on using WebAssembly makes me excited to see what the future holds for developers. We can be creators of anything and everything without the current restrictions we have today.