WebAssembly

What Is WebAssembly?

WebAssembly (WASM) is a low-level binary format for web applications. It's not a programming language but a compilation target: you write in languages like Rust, C, or C++, compile to WebAssembly, and run in browsers with near-native performance. This opens possibilities previously impossible in web applications: complex computations, real-time graphics, and sophisticated algorithms run efficiently.

WebAssembly is safer than running native code: it runs in a sandboxed environment with controlled resource access. It's also portable: the same WebAssembly binary runs on all modern browsers and platforms. Performance is dramatically better than JavaScript for compute-heavy tasks: often 10-100x faster.

WebAssembly enables use cases JavaScript cannot handle: ML inference in browsers, video processing, 3D rendering, and scientific computing. Python is now compilable to WebAssembly, enabling Python running in browsers. The ecosystem is maturing: more libraries, better tooling, and broader adoption.