Speaker: Rob Pilling

Most people have heard of Rust, due to the vibrant and happ[y community around the language, exemplified by it having held the top spot as the 'most loved' language in the Stack Overflow developer survey for the past six years. However, few of us get the chance to use this delightful language in our day-to-day work.

WebAssembly is a new runtime, born in the browser, yet making a significant impact as a versatile runtime for a wide range of applications (FaaS, blockchain, plug-in). 

There is a close synergy between WebAssembly and Rust - Rust is both an ideal language for writing WebAssembly applications and for creating WebAssembly runtimes. In this panel we'll explore this synergy, and see where the combined might of WebAssembly and Rust might take us.

Webassembly has been doing the rounds for a little while now. It's implemented in all major browsers, and we've seen several large, typically desktop-only apps use it to run on the web. Not to mention DOOM, of course.

This makes Webassembly seem intimidating, surely there must be a lot to if if we've got apps like Photoshop standing atop it. But how big and scary is it? Can I pick it up in an afternoon? Turns out Webassembly isn't that different to tinkering on, say, a Raspberry Pi, Arduino or even a BBC Micro.

Join me in this talk where I run through the foundational corners of webassembly and aim to inspire you to have a dabble yourself!