Reactive Summit 2022

WebAssembly was originally used to run code in languages other than JavaScript in a web browser. The browser demands efficient and secure computation which makes WebAssembly equally promising for cloud services and edge computing. This talk will introduce WebAssembly from the point of view of a systems programmer, rather than a web developer. It will include an example of using WebAssembly in the cloud to continue the trend of abstracting more of the run-time into the infrastructure and a motivating example to demonstrate how WebAssembly can be used to flexibly and securely move code from the cloud to the edge. It will conclude with observations and advice and highlight unsolved problems with this emerging technology. WebAssembly has the potential to be the platform executing an enormous amount of IoT computation. It can be used as a product differentiator to provide a competitive advantage by helping design systems with reactive principles like efficient execution, accepting failure, decoupling space and time, and allowing code to be adapted quickly and responsively.