WebAssembly: The Definitive Guide

Chapter 15. Applied WebAssembly: In the Cloud and on the Edge

I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now From up and down and still somehow It’s cloud illusions I recall I really don’t know clouds at all

Joni Mitchell, “Both Sides Now”

Given the popularity and ubiquity of cloud computing initiatives these days, it may seem odd to start this chapter with a quotation about not understanding clouds. If we are being honest, I think that it is fair to say that a lot of people do not understand the full scope of cloud computing. There is the obvious speed improvement and ease of spinning up instances, in contrast to the often untenable scenario of procuring physical hardware systems. But having everything in the cloud is just as silly of a strategy as having nothing in the cloud.

The real driver of your thinking about cloud strategy should not just be procurement and developer productivity, even though those are important considerations. A more general idea is to consider the cost of computation. This is a more complex calculation than it may seem, though, in terms of what I mean by both “cost” and “computation.” In this chapter, I am going to focus on how where we run our computation is changing rapidly and why WebAssembly is going to be a key part of that.

A Short, Personal Detour

Earlier in my career, I was one of the first employees at a company called Parabon.¹ We built an internet-distributed computing platform to aggregate idle time on computers all over the world. Keep ...