By default, the behavior language for browsers has always been JavaScript; unfortunately, a key caveat is the fact that it's an interpreted language that incurs the performance penalty. Wouldn't it be great if browsers supported some binary code format instead? Definitely! That's WebAssembly (Wasm). The idea is that developers can now use higher-level languages, for instance, C++, Rust, C#, Java, and compile those to Wasm standardized binary format.

The benefit is not just performance as it creates new opportunities to do cross-platform development across multiple technologies. Wasm is importable in JavaScript, hence we might consider using it as a bridge between these technologies. Additionally, browsers are not the only platform that can execute Wasm; server-side platforms can do that too, which means it can be used for server-side processes such as server-side rendering, headless computing, and so on. With Wasm, developers can actually develop complete browser-based apps and not use JavaScript. There are already several technologies that take advantage of this, for example, Xamarin, and Blazor.