WebAssembly: The Definitive Guide

Chapter 1. Introduction

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Dr. Carl Sagan

This chapter will introduce WebAssembly and provide context for its expansive reach. In some sense it is a culmination of the evolution of the web over the last several decades. There is quite a bit of history to cover to make sense of it all. If you are not a fan of history and exposition, you can skip this chapter and go to directly to Chapter 2, but I hope you don’t. I think it is important to understand why this technology is so important and where it came from.

What WebAssembly Offers

One of the greatest skills an engineer can develop is the ability to assess what a new technology brings to the table. As Dr. Fred Brooks of the University of North Carolina reminds us, there are no “silver bullets”; everything has trade-offs. Complexity is often not eliminated with a new technology, but is simply moved somewhere else. So when something does actually change what is possible or how we do our work in a positive direction, it deserves our attention and we should figure out why.

When trying to understand the implications of something new, I usually start by trying to determine the motivation of those behind it. Another good source of insight is where an alternative has fallen short. What has come before, and how does it influence this new technology we are trying to decipher? As in art and music, we are constantly borrowing good ideas from multiple sources, so to truly understand why WebAssembly ...