Webassembly 2022 questionnaire results are fresh

The author of this article ：Colin Eberhardt

Link to the original text ：https://blog.scottlogic.com/2022/06/20/state-of-wasm-2022.html

The translation and dissemination of this article has been approved by the original author Colin Authorization of .

2022 year WebAssembly The status survey is over , The result is fresh —— Some interesting findings ！

last year WebAssembly Has undergone considerable changes , although Wasm The language pattern changes slowly , But people use WebAssembly The purpose of has changed significantly .Wasm stay Serverless、 The application of containerization and plug-in technology has made a great leap ,WebAssembly system interface （WASI） Becoming more and more important .

Want to know more ？ Let's look at the details .

The main points of

I did the same questionnaire last year , We learned that ：

• Rust It is the most commonly used and needed by people WebAssembly Language .
• AssemblyScript It's the second most popular WebAssembly Language .
• WebAssembly It is expected that Web、Serverless、 Games and containerized applications have a major impact .
• better debug Support is the area that people think needs the most attention .

that , What are the new conclusions this year ？ Before we discuss the details , Let's first look at the key points ：

• Rust The usage and popularity of continue to rise .
• Python The use of has increased significantly .
• JavaScript It has become a feasible WebAssembly Language .
• about Blazor for , It has made great progress in the past year , Usage and popularity are highly improved .
• Wasmtime Is the most widely used runtime.
• WebAssembly stay Serverless、 The use of containerization and hosting as plug-ins has increased significantly .
• Survey respondents use more frequently WebAssembly.
• non-browser API yes WebAssembly Get the biggest voice from the community .

about WebAssembly Come on , It was a pretty good year ！ Next , We will study the findings in more detail , And explore some of these changes . The questionnaire directly follows many questions of last year , It is convenient to directly compare with last year . Last year a total of 250 Interviewees , This year it has increased to 299 name .

Language

The first question is to explore which development languages people are using , Interviewees were asked What languages are you using , Or have you tried to use WebAssembly Development ?

 

Rust Again at number one ,45% Percent of people say they often or sometimes use it .WebAssembly and Rust It does have a very close relationship , majority WebAssembly runtime It's all used Rust Compiling , be based on wasm The same is true of various platforms . It also has some of the best tools , So it's not surprising to be number one .

This year, ,JavaScript In second place . Last year I didn't add JavaScript Options （ No one passed “ other ” Option means they use it ）, This is a major change compared with last year ！

JavaScript Cannot compile to WebAssembly, So how does it work ？ For this challenge , There is a clever solution ： Can be JavaScript The engine compiles to WebAssembly, Then use it to execute code , Rather than JS Compiled into Wasm. This is actually much more practical than expected .

This year, ,67% Percent of respondents said they often use WebAssembly, This is better than last year's 47% There's a big improvement .

The figure below shows the comparison with last year , Use the given language “ often ” or “ Sometimes ” Percentage of respondents ：

The picture shows Rust The usage of is steadily increasing , But the biggest increase is Blazor and Python.Pyscript , An interactive online playground Introduction , No doubt Python Is of great significance .AssemblyScript The largest decrease in the use of , This is a little surprising . Want to know if some respondents mistakenly AssemblyScript Identified as JavaScript？

The next question is what language people most want to use WebAssembly Development ：

No one's surprise ,Rust At the top . In the past six years , It's in StackOverflow In the survey, he has been stable “ The most popular ” Top of the list of languages .

Let's see how it compares with last year ：

Rust The popularity of has increased slightly , But the fastest rising is Blazor,Go Followed by .

about Blazor Come on , This is a very good year ！

WebAssembly application

Next , Let's see how you use WebAssembly Purpose , And their expectations for the future .

The title of the questionnaire is You are currently using WebAssembly What is the purpose ？ You can choose more , Or enter other answers you suggest . Here are all the replies , among “ Other ” Including all the replies filled in one ：

Most people use it WebAssembly Conduct Web Development . however , If we compare this year's results with last year's results , You will find some great changes ：

WebAssembly stay Serverless And the use of containerization has been improved . If you want to know why WebAssembly It is such an important technology for these applications , I recommend this article 《 Please pay attention to WebAssembly》 , Or this one 《 When WebAssembly replace Docker Time of day 》, They cover this year in Kubecon Various discussions on .

The biggest increase is WebAssembly As an application of plug-in environment . It is a great way to host untrusted code in a secure environment runtime.Lapce The code editor is a good example .

WebAssembly Use in games has declined , But I don't know why

Runtimes

Consider non browser based WebAssembly How the usage develops , This year I put forward a question about runtime New problems of —— What have you heard or used runtimes？

From bytecode alliance wasmtime, Has been the most widely used ; Next is wasmer, It was developed by a startup .

characteristic

WebAssembly Follow by W3C Managed public proposal process . The survey included in section 2 Stage （ Available specifications ） And the 3 Stage （ Realization ） More mature feature proposals for , And asked you which items you are most interested in .

Added shared linear memory and atomics Thread proposal is among the best , Second, yes exception And garbage collection support .

WebAssembly system interface （WASI）, by WebAssembly Added further system level integration API, Is becoming more and more important , So the questionnaire also asked people about WASI Interested in the proposal ：

I/O Type comes first , The second is socket、 File systems and native threads . It is worth noting that , If you compare this chart with the previous WebAssembly Compare the chart of the proposal , Then it can be found that on the whole, people are WASI My interest is much greater .

Last , Ask the interviewee Do you think WebAssembly What is most needed to succeed in the future ？

non-brower API At the top , This further highlights people's understanding of WASI Interest and WASI Importance .

population distribution

Last , The survey included some questions about population distribution . Here is a brief share of data .

Respondents should check their JavaScript、 Back end and WebAssembly Development technology level ：

Interestingly , Last year's survey respondents showed that they were the most proficient JavaScript And front end development , This year's survey has attracted developers with higher back-end capabilities , This probably reflects WebAssembly The changing focus .

They were also asked to use WebAssembly Or understand WebAssembly Time for .

This year's respondents are obviously more experienced , With the last “＜1 year ” comparison , Most people answered yes 2 About years of experience .

Conclusion

Thank all those who participated in this survey . If you want to do your own analysis , You can download this CSV file （https://wasmweekly.news/assets/state-of-webassembly-2022.csv）. If you find any other interesting results , Please be sure to share with you .

As I mentioned in the introduction , about WebAssembly Come on , This is a very important year . Although it was determined before WebAssembly Is going to ge runtime shift , But I didn't expect the change to be so significant .