WebAssembly Today ✍️ #3
Updates & commentaries on WebAssembly related technologies, including Rust, serverless, cloud, blockchain, and AI. Focus on the server-side.
Do you think of the future of web apps is WebAssembly? 🤓
Twitter user Cts predicts that web apps will be built in C++ and Rust with WebAssembly. This tweet reminds me of the famous tweet from Solomon Hykes, co-founder of Docker.
If WASM+WASI existed in 2008, we wouldn't have needed to created Docker. That's how important it is. Webassembly on the server is the future of computing. A standardized system interface was the missing link. Let's hope WASI is up to the task!
Will WebAssembly virtual machine replace Docker and become the dominant runtime for the web? What do you think?
The past week sees a lot of exciting WebAssembly news from the decentralized web and blockchain tech.
Polkadot, a shared protocol built with WebAssembly and Rust, is live 🚀
Polkadot is live. Polkadot is the most anticipated public blockchain in the past 2 years. It is built from the ground up with Rust and WebAssembly technologies. Parity Technologies, the company that made the Polkadot Network, is believed to be the largest Rust dev employer in the world.
The biggest Ethereum developer event is coming! 👏
Ethereum Devcon6 is going to be held in Bogotá Colombia in 2021. Why should we care? Because WebAssembly is slated to become the virtual machine to run smart contracts in the next-generation Ethereum. It will be a big event for WebAssembly outside of the browser!
Memory management in WebAssembly ✊
Pankaj Chaudhary wrote an article to discuss memory management in WebAssembly applications with Rust. He explains how Javascript host applications can interact with Rust programs in WebAssembly through shared memory. Learn more.
Rusty news
Deno, written in Rust, released V1.0.3 🦕
Deno is a JavaScript / Typescript runtime written in Rust. It is based on the Google V8 engine (same as Node.js) and created by Ryan Dahl, one of the Node.js co-founders. Here are some related resources of Deno and WebAssembly.
👉 Use WebAssembly to run Rust functions in Deno
👉 Use the Deno feat native extension (similar to node.js NAPI)
Also, how to run Deno functions (in TypeScript) in serverless environments:
Read a FAQ with Deno, Rust, and WebAssembly.
Microsoft makes it easier for Rust developers to write Windows applications and component libraries 👩💻
Rust/WinRT developed by Microsoft is available for preview now. It is a language projection for the Windows Runtime that enables calling Windows APIs in a natural and idiomatic way. Learn more at its GitHub repo.
A new Rust book, Zero To Production 🦀
A new book, Zero To Production, by Luca Palmieri, chronicles how to create and deploy cloud-native applications in Rust as a team.
Rust is the most beloved programming language again ❤️
Rust is again the most beloved language among the professional developers StackOverflow surveyed. That's 5 years in a row!
Here are two articles explaining why Rust is on the rise.
Why Rust? This article discusses the benefits of Rust in several use case scenarios.
A new multi-person card game using your own game servers ✍️
It aims to solve the following problems with existing online card games with centralized game servers.
the requirement for creating accounts
difficulty in figuring out how to use
slow performance
Its technology stack is as follows.
Backend (game server): Rust with the Rocket server framework
Frontend: HTML and JavaScript
An introduction to SIMD and ISPC in Rust 🖥
One of the key reasons for using Rust is its high performance. Rust delivers performance similar to C but without the memory bugs that cause 80% of computer program crashes. It sounds like a really good deal. But it gets better.
As a fast-rising programming language, a lot of innovations are happening in the Rust compiler. It can often generate native code that is far more optimized than hand-tuned C code. The case in point is SIMD compilers for new CPU architectures. The article shows that the slowest Rust compiler setting produces code that is similar to C. But simple tweaks in Rust code and compiler settings could product code that outperforms C by as much as 30%.
Turns out that Rust’s zero-cost abstraction is better than free!
The Rust Programming Language book is published in China 🦀
Serverless happenings
Serverless could help scale efficient applications 🤖
StackOverFlow explores the benefits of serverless architecture. Serverless enables developers to build and deploy applications quickly. Once those applications become popular, serverless allows them to scale up efficiently.
Khan Academy's Scaling Story to 2.5x Traffic Using a Serverless Architecture and CDN 🏆
During the COVID-2019 pandemic, Khan Academy saw its usage grow 2.5 times in March compared to the same time last year. An engineer of Khan Academy shared how Khan Academy handled the traffic growth with serverless.
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