September 2019
Beginner
47 pages
1h 4m
English
Content preview from What Is WebAssembly?
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Chapter 1. The Interactive Web, and Why We Need WebAssembly
JavaScript, despite facing stiff competition from Flash and Silverlight plug-ins, has been the language of the web for more than 25 years. The first version of JavaScript was developed very quickly, over the course of just two weeks, which has led to some of the language quirks that are still present today. However, in the quarter century since, the language and the browser runtimes have evolved and matured considerably. We are now using JavaScript, often in combination with advanced user interface (UI) frameworks such as React, to create complex browser-based applications that contain tens of thousands of lines of code.
This chapter looks at the origins of JavaScript, and how it fought off competition from the plug-ins. However, despite emerging as the winner and becoming the de facto technology for delivering applications over the web, it is not without issues. We touch on some of these and see how WebAssembly provides a much more optimal solution for web applications.
The Birth of JavaScript
JavaScript was somewhat famously invented over a two-week period in 1995 by Brendan Eich while working at Netscape, one of the early browser pioneers. It is fair to say that those who initially developed and supported JavaScript saw it as a simple scripting language, expecting developers to add a few small scripts to their pages to make them a little more interactive. It was certainly not expected to become the industry-leading ...
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I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.