WebAssembly and the Death of JavaScript - JS Monthly - February 2018

WebAssembly and the future of JavaScript - Colin Eberhardt

For more than 20 years JavaScript has been the only 'native' language of the web. That's all changed with the release of WebAssembly. This talk will look at what WebAssembly is, why it matters and crucially what it means for JavaScript and the future of web development. JavaScript brought interactivity to the web more than 20 years ago, and despite numerous challenges, it is still the only language supported by the 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 we 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.

This talk will look at what's wrong with the way we are using JavaScript today and why we 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, we'll do some crystal-ball gazing and see what the future of this rapidly evolving technology might hold.

[ronidey]

39:50 - " no its not gonna die"

[richardvaughn]

I am disappointed. Nowhere did you mention the status of adding COBOL support for webasm.
PERFORM VARYING X BY 1 FROM 0 UNTIL X = 9001
SUBTRACT 1 FROM 90-HAPPINESS
END-PERFORM
I like to yell at my IDE when I code and I prefer a language that reflects that.

[FredrikChristenson]

Great talk m8!

Outlining all the options you feel to be relevant, not pushing an agenda and sharing your personal thoughts on what the findings you present means, top notch all the way.

The big battle to be had is between Rust and Typescript if I dare a guess, it is going to be amazing to see how the coming 5 years will change the web platform.

[romanscharkov]

39:04 WASM will make the "app store" concept absolete. In the near future you'll just type in the domain name, wait a second for the "heavy" resources (likes pictures, models, data sets etc.) to load into the cache and you're ready to use any application, on any device, be it your IOS or Android phone or desktop computer running Linux, Windows or Mac.

Most device APIs that frameworks like Corvoda currently provide will be covered by the browser natively, just like notifications, cameram etc. are already supported.

The "Write once run everywhere" concept will finally be achieved making the web the ultimate application platform.

[sandeepvk]

Excellent ! This is how a good presentation is made. High level, interesting engaging, and alway staying within the context of the topic.

[MrPlaiedes]

Before you jump the JavaScript ship, remember that frameworks like react, angular, vue, etc. are the result of two decades of evolution. It wasn’t perfect in the beginning but I would argue it’s the best time to be a web developer. If you want to jump ship, you must also forgo the browser as we know it; the idea of interpreting JavaScript into machine code.

[ProgrammingMadeEZ]

Blazor looks amazing. The .NET web development community is very excited about the possibility of writing interactive web applications exclusively in C#. A new compilation target that doesn't have JS's overhead is a very welcome thing for all other languages besides JS. I expect a flood of new web development platforms to rise from this.

[RasmusSchultz]

Very good presentation. I only wish he would elaborate on the performance - he claims WASM isn’t substantially faster than JS? They’re benchmarking “the wrong things”, he says.

I can’t make sense of that. We’ve all seen benchmarks of JS vs C, and C typically in the order of 10-15 times faster than JS. I’ve heard people from Mozilla and NVidia say that C compiled to WASM is very close to a native C performance, so that doesn’t add up at all.

Perhaps for something like Mandelbrot it’s true, but that’s just maths performed in a single loop, which is likely easy to optimize in a JS VM or anywhere - but probably doesn’t resemble most real world applications. It’s actually popular as a synthetic benchmark, but others are benchmarking “the wrong things”? I don’t follow.

[markemerson]

we write a lot of javascript? BS, all the damn libraries and frameworks that keep spawning write the javascript. i cant wait for it to go frankly.

[BrookMonroe]

Is there a transcript available somewhere? I read faster than anyone presents, and I suspect a lot of people do. #videoisslow

[varunaeeriyaulla]

For most web applications, JavaScript is the best option. Web Assembly is best used for computationally intensive web applications, such as web games.

[jgttech]

I absolutely love JavaScript. I have learned all the mainstream frameworks for front-end and starting working with the backend frameworks. JavaScript is a perfect language in my book (not literally but pretty close). JavaScript is not restrictive and rigged. JavaScript is flexable and nible. Something other languages are not. Java is extremely rigid. C# also extremely rigid. OOP is great and all, but it's *not* the be-all-end-all. JavaScript can utilize both the OOP and procedural paradigms. It's not going away while other languages are so rigid. Maybe if Java or C# becomes more flexible it'll have a greater say, but JavaScript is still the most flexible language out there. The only thing better is C and C++. I wouldn't mind C++ based API's, that would be cool.

[SaHaRaSquad]

Can't wait for the first Electron app that uses wasm to run compiled code and utilizes 800MB of RAM.

[dlwatib]

Javascript is just hitting its stride. It's got a long ways to go yet as a language. Webassembly will only enhance its utility, not diminish it.

[lostheptapod]

C is horrible and dirty? I would say the same of javascript, in fact to me js is more dirty

[sokolokombo]

It is so annoying to see comments of people simply hating on one or the other. They can both coexist in harmony. Sadly, the speaker did not make it clear with his poor choice of title. JavaScript will still exist in several applications which don't contain much computational work. When it comes to the need for speed and performance however, WebAssembly obviously wins. The .wasm format is as close to 1s and 0s as posible. One must also realize that WebAssembly is very young compared to JS. It still has a lot of room to grow. Remember when JS was in its infancy. Well look at it now.

[vanlitespeed]

The fact that JavaScript still is used todat is a testament to the masterpiece created in 10 days, incredible!

[thesanctuary]

What I want is not death of JS but to give option to developers with their preferance.
It is monotomy of one language in web ecosystem for decades.
Choosing language in web is "1" frequency until now(for JS), hope to be changed to "1/n" in the future for all.

[पापानटोले]

More than 18 months now.. Is Javascript unconscious or half-dead at least or hospitalized?

[DheerajBhaskar]

Wow! This talk just blew my mind. This is a tectonic shift which will change the web and primarily web development as we know it.

AI makes your job uncertain. This makes the usefulness of the tools you now know uncertain because of competition with other humans. Great!