WebAssembly

WebAssembly, abbreviated as Wasm, is a binary instruction format that enables near-native execution speed for code running in web browsers. It provides a compilation target for languages like C, C++, Rust, Go, and AssemblyScript, allowing performance-critical code written in these languages to run alongside JavaScript in the browser at speeds approaching native compiled programs.

WebAssembly does not replace JavaScript but complements it. Typical architectures use JavaScript for DOM manipulation, event handling, and application logic while delegating computationally intensive work to Wasm modules. Real-world applications include image and video processing, audio synthesis, physics simulations, cryptographic operations, and entire applications like Figma and Google Earth that run complex rendering engines in the browser. For web developers, WebAssembly opens the door to porting existing native codebases to the web and building applications that were previously impractical in browser environments due to performance constraints.