WebAssembly

 Last week, we read an article by our very own Ariel Ortiz, talking about the advantages of integrating web development into different courses, considering how important it is in the workforce, and in general. This week, we listened to "Lin Clark on WebAssembly", an episode from the Software Engineering Radio podcast, where we get a brief introduction to WebAssembly along with some of its strengths and weaknesses, which further strengthens last's week's idea. 

One of the main uses of WebAssembly today is that it is able to bring resource-heavy applications (and of course lighter ones as well) into our browsers, without the need to download anything into our own computers. It comes with the advantage that, since it's a low-level language, it is very fast and is able to perform tasks that seemed impossible a few years ago. 

Looking at its documentation, its intended use cases include using it for video games (even large AAA titles), photo and video editing applications, CAD (computer aided design), and much more. Today it's very common for us not to download simpler applications, like music players, clients for social media, and most non-specialized tools, but being able to add all these things to the list of tools we don't need to host locally could have a very big impact on how we interact with our computers. 

I looked a little into WebAssembly code after listening to the podcast, and being completely honest, it looks very complicated (as most low-level languages do at first sight), so I'm a bit reluctant to try it. Obviously it isn't the right choice for all situations, as no language can be. However, I do see the potential in it and will keep it in mind in the future in case I ever get to work on something that could benefit from it.