What the Heck is WebAssembly, and do I Have to Learn C Now?
by Dan Callahan
Sat, Apr 16, 2016
Room:
Rapson 58
Time:
8:30
Three years ago, Mozilla began experimenting with a low-level subset of JavaScript that supported ahead-of-time compilation and eliminated garbage collection pauses. The experiment worked: Programs written in C and compiled to this intermediate language, called asm.js, could deliver runtime performance within 1.5x of their native C speed. In contrast to Google's Native Client (NaCl / PNaCl) projects, asm.js remained backwards compatible with existing JavaScript engines.
Clearly, there was room for performance improvement on the Web, and a way to get there without breaking old browsers.
Last year, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla formed a W3C Community Group to collaborate "on a new, portable, size- and load-time-efficient format suitable for compilation to the web." They called it WebAssembly, and it starts landing in browsers this year.
Suddenly, JS isn't the only game in town: programs will be written in C, compiled to WebAssembly, and run faster than JavaScript ever could. Is this the end? Do we all have to learn C? Come to the talk and find out!
Clearly, there was room for performance improvement on the Web, and a way to get there without breaking old browsers.
Last year, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla formed a W3C Community Group to collaborate "on a new, portable, size- and load-time-efficient format suitable for compilation to the web." They called it WebAssembly, and it starts landing in browsers this year.
Suddenly, JS isn't the only game in town: programs will be written in C, compiled to WebAssembly, and run faster than JavaScript ever could. Is this the end? Do we all have to learn C? Come to the talk and find out!
About the Author
Dan Callahan is a Staff Software Engineer in Mozilla's Developer Relations team, where he focuses on Firefox add-ons and Servo parallel browser engine project. Dan previously worked on the Mozilla Persona project, an attempt at replacing passwords with user friendly public key cryptography built on open web standards.
Dan tweets as @callahad and swears he has every intention to blog at http://dancallahan.info.