Gerard Gallant - WebAssembly in Action

Compared to my friends, I was a late bloomer when it came to programming. I only discovered it in high school by chance because I needed another computer course, and my guidance counselor suggested Computer Ed. I was expecting to learn about how computers work, but, much to my surprise, the course was about programming. It didnt take long before I was hooked, and I adjusted my career direction from one dealing with building architecture to one in software architecture.

In 2001, I landed a job with Dovico Software helping it maintain and improve its C++ client/server application. The winds of change were blowing, and in 2004, Dovico decided to switch to a software-as-a-service model, and I moved to the web application product. I still helped maintain the C++ applications, but my core focus became web development with C# and JavaScript. These days, I still do web development, but my focus has shifted to the architecture side of thingsbuilding APIs, working with databases, and exploring new technologies.

I enjoy being able to give back to the developer community through blogs and public speaking. In September 2017, I was asked if Id be interested in giving a presentation at a local user group. As I was browsing for ideas on what I could talk about, I ran across an article from PSPDFKit that talked about a technology called WebAssembly (https://pspdfkit.com/blog/2017/webassembly-a-new-hope/).

I had read about Googles Native Client (PNaCI) technology, in which C or C++ compiled code could run in the Chrome web browser at near-native speeds. Id also read about Mozillas asm.js technology, where you could compile C or C++ code to a subset of JavaScript and have it run really fast in browsers that supported it. In browsers that didnt support asm.js, it would still run, but at normal speed, because its just JavaScript. Somehow, this was the first Id heard of WebAssembly.

WebAssembly takes the improvements that asm.js brought and aims to address its shortcomings. Not only can you write code in a number of different languages and compile it into something that works safely in a browser, but its already available in all major desktop and mobile browsers! Its also available outside the browser, in places like Node.js! I was blown away by its potential and spent every spare moment from then on digging into the technology and blogging about it.

Late in 2017, my blog posts were noticed by Manning Publications, and I was contacted to see if I would be interested in writing a book about WebAssembly. At first, the book was going to cover multiple languages as well as show you how to work with the technology from both a backend and frontend developer perspective. By the first review, however, it became obvious that the book wasnt focused enough, so we decided that it would be best to narrow the scope to the C++ programming language and focus more on backend developers.

The WebAssembly community and working groups havent been sitting still while Ive been working on this book. In fact, several advancements to the technology are in the works. Recently, the ability to use multithreaded WebAssembly modules in the desktop version of Google Chrome became possible without the need to turn on a developer flag! WebAssembly has the potential to help bring web development to a whole new level, and Im excited to see where things go.