Software Engineering Daily WebAssembly 3.0 with Andreas Rossberg
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Jan 20, 2026 
Andreas Rossberg, a programming languages researcher and architect of WebAssembly, dives into the evolution of this influential technology. He shares insights on the journey from WebAssembly's early designs to its powerful 3.0 spec, which introduces garbage collection and richer reference types. Rossberg explains how WebAssembly excels in compute-heavy applications compared to JavaScript. He also discusses its future capabilities, such as threads and effect handlers, and touches on non-web applications like edge computing and blockchain.
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Origins As A Secure Low-Level Web Target
- WebAssembly began as a pragmatic replacement for asm.js and NaCl to run native-like code in browsers securely.
- It targeted low-level languages (C/C++/Rust) with a linear memory and four numeric types for predictable performance.
Sandboxing And Web Constraints Shaped Design
- The web's primary constraint for running untrusted code is security, which shapes WebAssembly's design.
- Missing OS services (like filesystems) require alternate implementations and affect language runtimes.
Choose Wasm For Numeric-Intensive Workloads
- Consider WebAssembly when you have low-level numeric-heavy code that can be AOT-compiled for near-native performance.
- Avoid WebAssembly 1.0 for high-level GC languages because emulating runtimes is costly and awkward.
