What is WebAssembly?

WebAssembly, often abbreviated as WASM, is a low-level binary instruction format for a stack-based virtual machine. Designed as a portable compilation target for high-level programming languages like C, C++, and Rust, its primary goal is to enable code to run on the web at near-native speed. It offers a secure, sandboxed execution environment, making it ideal for web applications. While initially aimed at the web, it has also found use in other environments such as serverless computing and portable applications outside the web.

At its core, WebAssembly provides the following benefits:

1. Performance: By being closer to machine code, WebAssembly allows for faster parsing and execution compared to traditional JavaScript. It’s designed to execute at nearly the same speed as native machine code, making complex applications and computational tasks quicker on the web.

2. Portability: Code compiled to WebAssembly can run on any platform or device that supports the WebAssembly virtual machine. This makes it incredibly portable and universally adoptable without needing to rewrite code for different platforms.

3. Security: WebAssembly runs in a sandbox environment within the browser, providing a secure execution context that prevents access to the system’s memory directly, thus protecting against common exploits such as buffer overflows.

4. Language Interoperability: While initially WebAssembly was mainly targeted for C/C++ and Rust, the ecosystem has grown to support more languages. This allows developers to write high-performance web applications in the language they are most comfortable with or