WebAssembly is more than just the web

STEVEKLABNIK.COM

As Jay Phillips has pointed out a few times, WebAssembly is a bit of a misnomer, it isn’t an assembly language (it’s a byte-code), and it isn’t just for the web! In this blog post Steve Klabnik looks at how the WebAssemby specification has been carefully constructed to ensure that the runtime is not in any way tightly coupled to the web. He gives recent examples of wasm running on blockchain, as a microkernel and looks at the potential of running it on the desktop.

D now supports WebAssembly

DLANG.ORG

D is a relatively new multi-paradigm programming language that was released in 2001. Its goals are to “combine the performance and safety of compiled languages with the expressive power of modern dynamic languages”. And now D has been added to the ever-growing list of languages that support WebAssembly.

WasmBoy - a GameBoy emulator written in AssemblyScript

GITHUB.COM

AssemblyScript is an experimental language - a subset of TypeScript that compiles to WebAssembly. Most AssemblyScript examples are pretty trivial (the usual mandelbrot / fibonacci type stuff) - until now. This project is amazing, an entire emulator written using AssemblyScript. It certainly does a good job of demonstrating the viability of this language - really exciting stuff!

And Finally …

OK, this is the same as last week, but it’s my pet project, so I’m allowed to push it! … Like LEGO? like web tech? then head to logo-bricks to build your favourite web tech logos in brick form.