Developers have doubts about WebAssembly, report finds
Software Developers Optimistic About WebAssembly Adoption In 2023, Face Doubts And Challenges
According to The State of WebAssembly 2023 report, WebAssembly, also known as Wasm, is being utilized for more purposes than its original intended use for web applications. Despite this fact, some developers remain doubtful.
The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and SlashData, in collaboration with the Linux Foundation, recently dropped a report on September 6. According to the report, software developers seem positive about adopting Wasm for web and non-web environments, which is a good sign. Developers seem to find Wasm more flexible and efficient, resulting in faster loading times, as well as the chance to test new use cases and technologies. Plus, Wasm makes it possible to share code between different projects, and it performs better than JavaScript when dealing with computationally intense tasks.
Nevertheless, a significant number of individuals (around 22%) surveyed had negative thoughts regarding the adoption of Wasm, be it for web or non-web environments. Additionally, a vast majority (83%) of those who responded experienced difficulties dealing with Wasm, including problems related to detecting and solving errors, varying performance among runtimes, inconsistency in the developer experience across runtimes, lack of learning resources, and compatibility concerns with specific browsers.
According to the study, individuals are implementing WebAssembly in a diverse range of software endeavors such as presenting data (35%), the internet of things (32%), artificial intelligence (30%), games (28%), services that operate behind-the-scenes (27%), edge computing (25%), and numerous other projects. While Wasm is mainly employed in creating web-based applications (58%), that's being modified thanks to WASI (WebAssembly System Interface). This system entitles Wasm to function modularly through an interface.
The discoveries in the article were gathered from a unique questionnaire by SlashData during the third quarter of 2023. The study was conducted on behalf of CNCF, and involved 255 individuals. The State of WebAssembly 2023 report also discovered other noteworthy details.
Paul Krill holds the position of editor at large in InfoWorld, where he specializes in covering application development.
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