WebAssembly: When (and When Not) to Use It

WebAssembly (Wasm) is not primarily about speeding up web applications. Its strength lies in enabling the use of mature libraries from languages like C++ and Rust within web applications. Examples include using MuPDF.js for PDF handling, video and audio processing codecs, game engines, and cryptographic libraries. However, for typical web tasks like API calls and DOM updates, JavaScript suffices and WebAssembly could introduce unnecessary complexity. WebAssembly excels when bringing proven external libraries to handle computationally intensive tasks is required.