WebAssembly allows for web-based execution of languages other than JavaScript. Programs written in Rust or C++ can be compiled down to WebAssembly and shipped over the browser for on-the-fly execution in a safe, memory controlled environment.

WebAssembly has been in development for more than two years, and is still an immature ecosystem because building the necessary tooling for WebAssembly is hard.

Much of the web has been built around JavaScript and the V8 JavaScript engine, which has been tuned to optimize an interpreted language (JavaScript). WebAssembly modules are often written in C++ or Rust, which are compiled languages. There are engineering challenges at the edge between the interpreted JavaScript runtime and the precompiled WebAssembly modules.

Till Schneidereit is a senior research engineering manager at Mozilla. He joins the show to discuss the compilation path of WebAssembly and the state of the ecosystem.

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