Using WebAssembly Now: It's Easier Than You Think

WebAssembly (Wasm) has a misleading name, and an undeserved reputation for leaving real-world applications just out of reach. Turns out, it's come a long way in the server-side ecosystem, and it works great alongside other cloud native technologies! The not-so-new WebAssembly is a platform-agnostic bytecode that produces tiny binaries that run at near-native speed. The benefit of a platform-agnostic technology is that it works just as well outside of containers as it does inside containers, so it can be used for completely greenfield projects or integrate right alongside current container-based projects. This demo heavy talk will start with an overview of Wasm, what it's good for, and what it isn't good for. We will then dive straight into demoing the strengths of Wasm using wasmCloud, a CNCF sandbox application runtime. This demo will span across bare metal, VMs, edge devices, and more to show why this technology is perfect for solving the problems many applications face today.