WebAssembly Today ✍️ #15
Updates & commentaries on WebAssembly related technologies, including Rust, serverless, cloud, blockchain, and AI. Focus on the server-side.
Editorial: WebAssembly and Rust communities respond to Mozilla’s lay-off and explore the path forward.
WebAssembly Today
WebAssembly creator Alon Zakai optimistic about WebAssembly tooling's future after Mozilla😊
According to Zakai, Mozilla has been gradually decreasing its investment in WebAssembly tooling, but the Open Source community rose up to the challenge and is now responsible for most of the work. The last round of layoffs primarily affected the Rust Wasm tooling team, but there is already a vibrant community around these tools.
Preview PineTime Watch Faces in your Web Browser with WebAssembly⌚️
This project is firmware for the Pinetime smartwatch. It is written in modern C++, and then compiled to WebAssembly to run in your browser. There is a step-by-step guide for getting Pinetime smartwatch faces in your browser. Check it out.
Technologies:
Code written inmodern C++.
Build system based on CMake.
Based on FreeRTOS 10.0.0real-time OS.
Using LittleVGL/LVGL 6.1.2as UI library.
... and NimBLE 1.3.0as the BLE stack.
KubeCon EU: Envoy Looks to WebAssembly to Extend Microservices Monitoring👀
Yaroslav Skopets, software engineer at Tetrate, introduces an Envoy Extension to support WebAssembly functions at KubeCon EU.The Envoy Extension usesAssemblyScript, which is then compiled into WebAssembly bytecode.
Skopets explains that WebAssembly enables safe, efficient execution in a sandboxed environment.
Zoom on the Web: WebAssembly SIMD, WebTransport, and WebCodecs 💻
Ever wonder how Zoom replaces your background in video conferences in real time? That requires some serious performance juice!
According to Google V8 product manager Thomas Nattestad, Zoom is using WebAssembly SIMD for this! TheWebAssembly SIMD(single instruction, multiple data) spec provides a portable and performant subset of SIMD operations available across most modern architectures.
Convert Image to Ascii with Go and WebAssembly🌄
Upload an image to this website and let it generate an ASCII artwork for you. Very cool! This generator is written in Go and compiled to WebAssembly.
The author Subesh also wrote a blog post illustrating how to import your existing go code to Wasm and run it in the browser.
Extrablatt – customizable news article scraping in Rust and WebAssembly 📰
Extrablatt is a customizable news article scraping library. It has a CLI interface. It is written in Rust and runs in Wasm.
New technical tutorials for WebAssembly 🎈
First Steps with WebAssembly in Rust. This article is perfect as a getting started guide for beginners.
Rusty News
Rust foundation: take ownership 🦀
After the recent lay-off and refocusing at Mozilla, the Rust core team and Mozilla announced plans to create a separate non-profit organization to take stewardship of the Rust programming language. It is called, unsurprisingly, the Rust Foundation. The first step of the Rust foundation is to take ownership of the Rust brand, such as domain names associated with Rust, Cargo, and crates.io.
How to develop and run embedded applications in Rust and VScode 🖥
This is a new tutorial on how to develop and run embedded applications in Rust and VSCode. Rust on IoT is very cool.
RustConf 2020 🥳
RustConf is an annual gathering of global Rust developers. RustConf 2020 is a virtual event held on August 20th. You can watch the full conference video on YouTube. There are some great talks from Rust core team members. Check it out.
Rust Memory container Cheat-sheet 👏
Autocxx, calling CXX from Rust 🤖
Autocxx, developed by Google, is a tool for calling C++ from Rust in an automated, but safe, fashion.
New technical Tutorials for Rust: 🦀
A JavaScript Developer’s Cheatsheet for Rust. This cheat sheet provides some necessary comparisons between JavaScript syntax and their parallels in Rust to help JavaScript developers to understand how Rust works.
Serverless world
Cloudflare announced a new serverless platform 🦄
Cloudflare recently announced Cloudflare Workers Unbound — its new serverless platform. Cloudflare claims to provide "developers with unparalleled flexibility, performance, security, [and] ease of use" as well as saving " up to 75% for the same workloads running on legacy, centralized serverless platforms such as AWS Lambda."
Containers have peaked – brace yourself for the serverless takeover👂
After years of fast growth, the container hype may have finally peaked. Serverless is set to take over, because it is easier, cheaper, and safer. Company just need to focus on improving the business logic, without worrying about IT management complexities brought on by containers.
Enjoyed reading this newsletter? Please subscribe to make sure that you do not miss a future issue. ❤️
This newsletter is a collaborative effort. Don’t forget to leave comments! Suggest topics or projects you would like to see we cover next week via contact at webassembly dot today. Thanks!
Until then, stay safe, stay healthy! 😷