Best of WebAssembly — March 2025

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   Article

   InfoWorld·1y

   What you need to know about Go, Rust, and Zig

   Go, Rust, and Zig are emerging programming languages each with distinct advantages. Go, known for its simplicity and minimal syntax, excels in network services and standalone applications. Rust prioritizes memory safety and speed, becoming popular in server-side apps and replacing C/C++ in certain scenarios. Zig, a modern alternative to C, focuses on low-level programming with better memory safety features and easier integration with C projects.

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   Article

   Hacker News·1y

   smparsons/retroboy: A Game Boy emulator written in Rust.

   Retro Boy is a cycle-accurate Game Boy emulator written in Rust that can be played on the web using WebAssembly. It features accurate CPU, audio, and graphics emulation, supports various cartridge types and cheats, and utilizes local storage for game progress. The React/TypeScript-based web frontend offers customizable controls and a responsive design. The project includes an extensive test suite and thorough documentation on setup and usage.

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   Video

   Anthony GG·1y

   Golang FAILED Me! Here's What Worked Instead

   The post discusses the author's journey in transitioning from Golang to another language for their project's front-end. Despite Golang's strengths in backend development, the author faced performance issues with WebAssembly. They explored various languages like Rust, Zig, and Odin, finally choosing Odin due to its simplicity and suitability for their needs. The author values learning through struggle and is committed to building their application with Odin while continuing to use Golang for the backend.

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   Video

   Deno·1y

   WASM is easier than ever!

   WebAssembly (WASM) offers a way to execute binary machine code in the browser, enhancing performance for web applications. It is a portable binary format suitable for high-performance applications and uses languages like C, C++, and Rust. With Deno's support, using WASM modules has become more straightforward. This overview includes a practical example of creating and using a simple WASM module, highlighting the seamless integration with TypeScript and JavaScript.

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   Article

   Community Picks·1y

   Evan You on X: "While I agree Go is the the pragmatic choice for a 1:1 port, my biggest concern is Go's relatively subpar WASM performance. As a data point, esbuild's WASM build performs quite poorly

   Evan You highlights concerns about Go's WebAssembly performance, particularly noting that esbuild's WASM build performs poorly in web containers, even slower than JavaScript bundlers like Rollup. He questions if this will necessitate sticking with TypeScript in JavaScript for certain use cases like in-browser IDEs and playgrounds.

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