Nate Moore: WebAssembly in the JavaScript Ecosystem

Description: JavaScript developers might be surprised to learn how many of their dependencies already leverage Web Assembly (Wasm) behind the scenes. In this talk, we’ll explore notable uses of Wasm in the JavaScript/TypeScript ecosystems and discuss the benefits of hybrid Wasm/JS tooling as opposed to fully native or fully JS solutions.

Nate Moore, from @astrodotbuild -- Nate Moore is a co-creator and core maintainer of Astro and works as a Senior Software Engineer at The Astro Technology Company. Despite his primary focus on developer tooling, Nate’s early career as a UI/UX Designer and Web Developer instilled in him a deep appreciation for every layer of the web stack. As the lead developer of the Astro compiler (Go, Wasm), he has recently taken an interest in the disruptive potential of Wasm in the JavaScript ecosystem.

Resources mention in video and discussion:

[DavidAlsh]

Re: JavaScript killer: This is only the case because WASM can't really do anything. So far it's just a multi-language web Worker, which is already a feature almost nobody uses.

The reality is; if I could compile my existing JavaScript/TypeScript project to wasm such that the resulting binary was smaller and parsed faster than the equivalent JavaScript bundle, then it's a no brainer on how I'd distribute my application.

While JavaScript will stick around for simple websites that have basic scripting requirements (like WordPress sites and such), more fully featured applications (banking apps, vscode, slack) would be better suited to be written in languages that scale, test and perform better

There are lots to choose from, some offering parallelism, others offering runtime help for software design problems.

Web Assembly has so much promise but since it was announced almost a decade ago, I still can't update a div from a wasm compiled binary. Death by committee for a feature that I believed was going to be the real "web 3.0".

[ch.hayabusa]

1. The creator of Rust SWC chose Go for a TSC WASM translation because of its garbage compiler and paradigms made it much easier to port to than Rust.
2. Nate should look at speedup-silence tools and censorship bleeping tools to remove filler words and speedup video.

P.S. YouTube shadow banning is out of control.