WebAssembly Article

Introduction

WebAssembly is a set of standards that define a portable binary format and a corresponding language similar to the assembler language (Assembly) for executable program and environment-specific program interfaces into which it may be embedded and interact with. The main goal of WebAssembly is to enable high performance applications on web pages, but it is designed to be executed and integrated in other environments as well.

WebAssembly has been developed by various companies such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, W3C and Mozilla. It first appeared in March 2017.

Features

Stack Machine - Wasm code is intended to be run on a portable abstract structured virtual stack machine (VM). The VM is designed to be faster to parse than JS, as well as faster to execute and to enable very compact code representation.

Instruction Set - The core standard defines a unique Instruction Set Architecture consisting of specific binary encoding and which is intended to be executed by VM. However it doesn't specify how exactly they must be invoked by it.

Representation - In March 2017, the WebAssembly Community Group reached consensus on the initial (MVP) binary format, JS API, and reference interpreter. It defines a WebAssembly binary format, which is not designed to be used by humans, as well as a human-readable linear assembly bytecode format that resembles traditional assembly languages.

Pros/Cons

WebAssembly has its pros and cons:

Pros	Cons
Speed - WebAssembly is faster to load inside the browser than JavaScript as the already-compiled WASM files need to be transported over the internet. WASM is a low-level assembly-esque language with a compact binary format. To load JavaScript, the browser need to load all the '.js' files that are textual.	The method of delivery and execution of WebAssembly code allows malware writers, scammers and phising attackers greater ease in hiding the evidence of their attack.
Performance boosts - If you are handling numeric data or your algorithm is highly complex and worth the cost of parsing arguments to the WebAssembly module.	Time - Writing a full web application in WebAssembly has been said to be slow, painful, and counterproductive as there are no debuggers thus a lot of time will need to be spent on handling trivial topics.
Flexibility - Typically the virtual machine part of the web platform could only load JS, which has worked well generally; however more intensive use cases such as 3D games, VR and AR. Image / video editing and computer vision demand native performance.	Writing a full web app in WebAssembly might be counterproductive because your framework will expose DOM-related methods and these calls will be pretty slow.
Language - WebAssembly can be preferable if you don't like the JS language.	There is no compile step required in JS - You just need to type it, save the code and then refresh the browser to test. This saves time
Obfuscated code - WebAssembly is useful if you want to ship obfuscated code in browsers.	JS has a massive ecosystem, which offers powerful frameworks (such as ReactJS), libraries (jQuery) and other such tools.

Extra Programs

Front End Technologies - JavaScript, HTML, CSS
Front End Frameworks - ReactJS, VueJS, AngularJS
Back End Frameworks - Node.js
Related Programming languages - C, C++, Java, Assembly
Programming Practices - OO Practices, Procedural Practices

Sources

Summary

In conclusion:

WebAssembly is a very new technology but has already demonstrated that it is faster than JS-oriented technologies and standards in terms of website support and capabilities as well as performance. It is most likely going to get more and more popular and may even become the de-facto language for web development. WebAssembly can JS can also work together so there is not 100% competition per say - WebAssembly's code can import and synchronously call normal JS functions for example.