JSJ 309: WebAssembly and JavaScript with Ben Titzer

Panel:

• Charles Max Wood
• Cory House
• Aimee Knight

Special Guests: Ben TitzerIn this episode, the JavaScript Jabber panelists discuss WebAssembly and JavaScript with Ben Titzer. Ben is a JavaScript VM engineer and is on the V8 team at Google. He was one of the co-inventors of WebAssembly and he now works on VM engineering as well as other things for WebAssembly. They talk about how WebAssembly came to be and when it would be of most benefit to you in your own code.In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• Ben intro
• JavaScript
• Co-inventor of WebAssembly (Wasm)
• Joined V8 in 2014
• asm.js
• Built a JIT compiler to make asm.js faster
• TurboFan
• What is the role of JavaScript? What is the role of WebAssembly?
• SIMD.js
• JavaScript is not a statically typed language
• Adding SIMD to Wasm was easier
• Easy to add things to Wasm
• Will JavaScript benefit?
• Using JavaScript with Wasm pros and cons
• Pros to compiling with Wasm
• Statically typed languages
• The more statically typed you are, the more you will benefit from Wasm
• TypeScript
• Is WebAssembly headed towards being used in daily application?
• Rust is investing heavily in Wasm
• WebAssembly in gaming
• And much, much more!

Links:

• JavaScript
• V8
• WebAssembly
• asm.js
• TurboFan
• TypeScript
• Rust
• WebAssembly GitHub
• Ben’s GitHub

Picks:Charles

• Ready Player One Movie
• DevChat.tv YouTube
• Alexa Flash Briefings: Add skill for “JavaScript Rants”

Cory

• npm Semantic Version Calculator
• Kent Beck Tweet

Aimee

• MDN 418 Status code
• Quantity Always Trumps Quality blog post

Ben

• American Politics

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