The past, present, and future of the Web
summary
Argues the web gains a true low level ISA called webassembly that plugs into existing JS VMs rather than replacing JavaScript gives a concrete spec size 165 pages versus JS at ~885 pages shows examples: a Gameboy emulator port, Dropbox using wasm for compression, heavy compute fractal demo and a webassembly-native OS prototype all of which run with varying performance and small binaries notes current limits like no native DOM access and no GC yet but toolchains and APIs like Web USB are closing gaps.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (41)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:24HTML
- 4:32CSS
- 5:17JavaScript
- 5:36Core technologies
- 6:15Mod Perl
- 8:04Project Xanadu
- 8:53Rediscovery of JavaScript
- 9:10The Web Platform
- 10:08What is a Platform
- 11:41Java
- 12:54UNIX
- 14:12What happens to the Web
- 14:58Clientserver model
- 16:18Limitations
- 17:25The future
- 18:11The offline example
- 18:38On the web
- 19:51On JavaScript as an ISA
- 23:04On WebAssembly
- 24:32What does this give us
- 25:42SimD
- 26:42WebAssembly
- 31:19Web APIs
- 33:14The future of the Web
- 34:39Single Page Apps
- 36:19Universal Web Apps
- 37:21Web Assembly
- 37:50Factorial Program
- 38:20View Source
- 39:32Speed
- 40:14WebAssembly vs JavaScript
- 41:25Limitations of WebAssembly
- 42:12Garbage Collector
- 43:41Isomorphic Rust
- 44:54The Buddha
- 45:30Nebulous
- 46:14Traditional Web Applications
- 48:02The Birth and Death of JavaScript
- 48:45A mythical future
- 49:33Conclusion
