213 points by guest_author 2 years ago flag hide 36 comments
johnsmith 2 years ago next
Interesting article! I've been keeping an eye on Wasm and its capabilities beyond the browser. Good to see more coverage on the topic.
wasmspecialist 2 years ago next
Definitely! The fact that it can now be used at the edge is really exciting. It opens up a lot of possibilities for optimizing performance.
johnsmith 2 years ago next
Totally agree! Would love to see real-world use cases for edge computing with Wasm. Maybe in CDNs, IoT devices and etc.
vectorcode 2 years ago prev next
This is why Rust and WASM are such great complements. Safety guarantees, performance and flexible code sharing with JavaScript really shine here.
vectorcode 2 years ago next
@salthealer check out the Rust and WebAssembly book. It's a great resource to start with!
salthealer 2 years ago prev next
Indeed! Still need to learn more about Rust and WASM. Do you have any recommendations on resources?
curiousgeorge 2 years ago prev next
Any performance benchmark that you know of which compares WASM to native languages like C++ or Go?
cybermatt 2 years ago next
It's not direct comparison as such, but since WASM closer to native, you can look at <a href="https://webassembly.org/docs/comparison/">this link</a> to draw some conclusions.
a1b2c3d4e5 2 years ago prev next
This reminds me of Google's NaCl (Native Client) initiative back in the day. The idea has always been interesting to me, but it never seemed to go anywhere. WASM might change that!
programmingfan 2 years ago next
WebAssembly seems to have wider compatibility between browsers, and it has been tinkered with from several big players like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Mozilla.
whitecoder 2 years ago next
@mrhacker IMO WASM is a reason for a revisit to NaCl.
perfectpixel 2 years ago next
Yeah, I'd love to just see Nacl's adoption grow. WASM is definitely a catalyst for change.
learningprogrammer 2 years ago prev next
Would like to see more on how this impacts the web security landscape. Anyone with links to articles on that?
mrhacker 2 years ago prev next
IMO, while WASM moves closer to native, I think it's the power of virtualization making this a game-changer rather than WASM itself. Thoughts?
officialcoder 2 years ago next
Virtualization makes it very portable in execution env, agree there.
mrdeveloper 2 years ago next
@officialcoder I had the same thought; what do you think about WASM wasting resources to protection if you'd have native code in the same location?
cyberwiz 2 years ago next
It's worth a shot. My guess is that the overhead is close to negligible unless you're on a device with low specs.
webwanderer 2 years ago prev next
Brings back memories of asm.js :D Never expected it to become so popular back then.
programboss 2 years ago prev next
I'm wondering if this'll lead to any CSS-in-WASM solutions? Amazing if it does.
staticfrontend 2 years ago next
That is a very intriguing idea actually, would be excited to see it happen.
futuredreamer 2 years ago prev next
How is WASM sending data to the main thread? Sync? Async?
programmingwiz 2 years ago next
Async. You can use promises or async/await.
metalworker 2 years ago prev next
Either way, it's not that big of a deal. I think the main benefit of this is in serverless and edge computing.
bravercode 2 years ago next
Indeed. Edge computing can save bandwidth too. Cool!
lbarcelon 2 years ago prev next
WebAssembly and edge computing seem like an amazing combination. How does this impact data-heavy applications? Could it drastically speed up image/video processing?
blessedco 2 years ago next
@l Barcelon sure! Offload work from servers to Wasm runtimes across a network. Result? Faster processing and lower infrastructure costs on the server side. Totally thrilling!
sambaite 2 years ago next
@blessedco Could you please expand more on offloading work from servers to edge runtimes? I don't quite follow your thought process.
blessedco 2 years ago next
@sambaite For example, you have video-hosting platform where videos can be transcoded by backend servers. Instead, you use WASM runtimes running on CDN enabled servers. So, the video transcoding happens closest to the users where they're watching the videos, hence less latency and more speed.
kensan2 2 years ago prev next
Now we need a language that's designed to be better integrated with WASM.
wasmidllover 2 years ago next
It might be a good moment to consider more WASI standards across different languages and platforms.
rverdes 2 years ago prev next
Is there any good comparison between WASM and LUA JIT?
codingcaptain 2 years ago next
There's not a direct comparison but LUA JIT is more portable between different platforms; modifying a piece of code makes altering behavior easier. But, the runtime speed difference is considerable, making WASM more suited to heavy applications.
fzenking 2 years ago prev next
Next step is influencing real companies and developers to adopt it.
lingx 2 years ago prev next
Impressed. WebAssembly's future beyond browsers looks exciting.
wastl 2 years ago next
@miraclekate That'd be insane! I'm not sure if it'll happen but it would change the game!!
miraclekate 2 years ago prev next
The day when we can surf the web in WASM instead of JS is not far.