WebAssembly: The Definitive Guide: Safe, Fast, and Portable Code
Автор: Brian Sletten (2021)
I believe WebAssembly is an ascendant technology that has the potential to transform the entire software development industry in one form or another. I do not believe WebAssembly is going to be transformative because I am writing a book on the topic. I’m writing a book on it because I believe it will be transformative.
Presumably you are interested in the technology as well. The problem is, I think I have less of an idea of who you are as a reader than many authors do. If this were a book about a particular programming language or a specific topic, there would be a self-selecting aspect to the audience and I could proceed apace. But WebAssembly is a much larger topic than most people realize, and I am trying to paint a very large picture with this book. Most of the other books that have been published have focused on a single aspect of it, and I can understand why.
Some of you might think WebAssembly is a technology for killing JavaScript. It isn’t. Some of you may think it is about bringing applications to the browser. It is that, but it is also so much more. It is useful on the server side, in the video game world, as a plug-in mechanism, in support of serverless functions and edge computing, in embedded systems, for the blockchain, and in many other topics we will investigate together. This is the first attempt I know of to be this comprehensive with the topic, and I felt it was important to tell this more complete version.
In the lead-up to the publication of this book, I have mostly gotten positive support and excitement from people I have spoken to about the project. One limited form of pushback I have gotten is with respect to the title. Some folks felt it was premature to have “The Definitive Guide” for this new of a technology. That is a fair position to take, but because I am trying to describe an extremely big and encompassing technical landscape, I thought it was reasonable. I hope by the end of the book you agree.
All I ask is that you have an open mind and a bit of patience. WebAssembly touches a lot of languages, runtimes, and operational environments. In addition to teaching you about the low-level details, we will look at integrations with the dominant programming languages in this space and several different use cases. I have tried not to make too many assumptions about your background, so I have heavily annotated the text with breadcrumbs for further exploration and discovery via footnotes. If you are a more advanced developer just seeking details about WebAssembly, feel free to ignore these and don’t take offense. I expect a rather wide audience will be at least perusing this book, and I want them to feel welcome, too.
If you are on the junior side development-wise, this will be a challenging book. But I have tried to make it possible for you to at least see what is going on. Consider the various links and references as a personal guide into a more sophisticated development reality. Don’t get overwhelmed, just tackle things one at a time in whatever order interests you or makes sense. There is no single way into this industry, and however you get there is legitimate.
At the end of the day, WebAssembly is going to allow us to basically choose our programming languages and run them securely in just about any computational surface area. We have been promised this before, but I think this time it is more likely to come to fruition. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to explain why.
Автор: Brian Sletten (2021)
I believe WebAssembly is an ascendant technology that has the potential to transform the entire software development industry in one form or another. I do not believe WebAssembly is going to be transformative because I am writing a book on the topic. I’m writing a book on it because I believe it will be transformative.
Presumably you are interested in the technology as well. The problem is, I think I have less of an idea of who you are as a reader than many authors do. If this were a book about a particular programming language or a specific topic, there would be a self-selecting aspect to the audience and I could proceed apace. But WebAssembly is a much larger topic than most people realize, and I am trying to paint a very large picture with this book. Most of the other books that have been published have focused on a single aspect of it, and I can understand why.
Some of you might think WebAssembly is a technology for killing JavaScript. It isn’t. Some of you may think it is about bringing applications to the browser. It is that, but it is also so much more. It is useful on the server side, in the video game world, as a plug-in mechanism, in support of serverless functions and edge computing, in embedded systems, for the blockchain, and in many other topics we will investigate together. This is the first attempt I know of to be this comprehensive with the topic, and I felt it was important to tell this more complete version.
In the lead-up to the publication of this book, I have mostly gotten positive support and excitement from people I have spoken to about the project. One limited form of pushback I have gotten is with respect to the title. Some folks felt it was premature to have “The Definitive Guide” for this new of a technology. That is a fair position to take, but because I am trying to describe an extremely big and encompassing technical landscape, I thought it was reasonable. I hope by the end of the book you agree.
All I ask is that you have an open mind and a bit of patience. WebAssembly touches a lot of languages, runtimes, and operational environments. In addition to teaching you about the low-level details, we will look at integrations with the dominant programming languages in this space and several different use cases. I have tried not to make too many assumptions about your background, so I have heavily annotated the text with breadcrumbs for further exploration and discovery via footnotes. If you are a more advanced developer just seeking details about WebAssembly, feel free to ignore these and don’t take offense. I expect a rather wide audience will be at least perusing this book, and I want them to feel welcome, too.
If you are on the junior side development-wise, this will be a challenging book. But I have tried to make it possible for you to at least see what is going on. Consider the various links and references as a personal guide into a more sophisticated development reality. Don’t get overwhelmed, just tackle things one at a time in whatever order interests you or makes sense. There is no single way into this industry, and however you get there is legitimate.
At the end of the day, WebAssembly is going to allow us to basically choose our programming languages and run them securely in just about any computational surface area. We have been promised this before, but I think this time it is more likely to come to fruition. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to explain why.
