A recent WebAssembly survey sponsored by software development company Scott Logic has shed light on the increasing usage of WebAssembly as a runtime for plug-ins and serverless, alongside its traditional role in web development. The survey also highlighted the consensus among developers that tooling for WebAssembly is currently lacking.
According to the survey, the use of WebAssembly outside the browser is on the rise. Notably, serverless was identified by nearly 40 percent of respondents as a primary use case, with use as a plug-in environment following closely at nearly 30 percent. These categories have shown significant growth since earlier surveys in 2021 and 2022. While use for web development remains the largest category, it has seen a slight decline since 2021.
The survey also revealed that developers prefer to code in Rust, followed by JavaScript, C++, and direct coding of WebAssembly Text Format. Scott Logic CTO Colin Eberhardt highlighted the status of JavaScript as the second most popular language, despite the inability to compile JavaScript to WebAssembly. This trend reflects the complementary nature of WebAssembly with JavaScript, as it was designed to enable applications to run in sandboxed environments and cross-platform.
Notably, the survey also indicated a disparity between end user developers and those engaged in WebAssembly tooling. While end user developers favored Rust, tool developers had higher usage for AssemblyScript, Zig, C#, and Go.
Another survey by SlashData, Linux Foundation, and CNCF presented different results, with JavaScript topping the list, followed by C#, Python, and Java. This disparity suggests that Scott Logic’s survey may have reached a more niche community, while CNCF’s survey targeted a more general audience.
Both surveys, however, agreed on the top challenges in WebAssembly, with tooling being a major concern. Respondents from both surveys highlighted difficulties in debugging and troubleshooting, emphasizing the need for better debugging support and integration with non-browser APIs. Better build tooling was also identified as a high priority.
Despite the challenges, WebAssembly is maturing, with top feature requests such as threads, garbage collection, and exception handling already in the implementation or standardization phase. Eberhardt noted that these features are “ready to use and close to finalization,” indicating the progress of WebAssembly.
In conclusion, the survey findings indicate that WebAssembly is no longer solely focused on web applications but is gaining interest for running code in a variety of different environments. Many respondents expressed expectations for WebAssembly to deliver on the “write-once and run anywhere promise,” originally made by Java. As WebAssembly continues to evolve, addressing tooling challenges and implementing key features will be crucial for its widespread adoption in diverse runtime environments.
Original survey [here]
