What makes WebAssembly safe?
Hello out there! We've got a beefy January update for y'all:
New chapter
We've just published a draft of the FINAL technical chapter of the book, the deep dive What Makes WebAssembly Safe?
In the introduction to this book, we told you that one of the most important features of WebAssembly is that it’s safe by default.
In this chapter, we’ll discuss exactly what that means. We’ll move beyond loaded (and vague) terms like safety, and instead discuss the specific guarantees that WebAssembly provides and what the practical consequences are.
With this chapter in the bag, we're getting close to the official launch of the book, which is planned for March 4, 2025. Hope you're as excited as we are!
Reader sessions
At the end of December, we put out a call on the socials:
Hello! We're looking for 1-2 people who've already bought the book but haven't yet started and are interesting in working through the first 1-2 chapters LIVE on a video call with me.
Interested? Reply here or to the post on the #announcements channel in the book's Discord.
A number of people replied, and we had some great feedback sessions with a few readers (thanks Frédéric, Clemens, and Tom!). Based on their feedback, we made a bunch of improvements to the early parts of the book — simplifying some of the content and improving the flow.
New blog post
Last week we published our first blog post: A WebAssembly compiler that fits in a tweet. Maybe you saw it on Hacker News or Lobste.rs…if not, have a look!
Links
- MoonBit is a new, Wasm-native programming language with a syntax similar to Rust (although it has a GC)
- Wasmtime's mechanism for preventing infinitely-executing WebAssembly code is called "fuel"
- SpiderMonkey JS engine, compiled to WebAssembly, running in the browser
- Is Memory64 actually worth using?
- Learn WebAssembly is a code-first, hands-on WebAssembly course by Dominic Elm. Seems like a great complement to our our book!
🖖,
P+M