WebAssembly vs JavaScript: What’s the Difference Between Both?

Web development has changed a lot in recent years. To make websites more interactive and powerful, developers are using varying tools. Among these tools, WebAssembly and JavaScript are important. That’s because they have their own use and benefits in web development. Let’s see the difference between both of them one by one.

1. Performance — WebAssembly has excellent speed. In fact, it has about near-native speed. JavaScript is also faster. But it’s slower than WebAssembly.
2. Portability — WebAssembly is really portable. Javascript, on the other hand, doesn’t depend on platforms. It runs on varying browsers.
3. Security — There are different security risks in JavaScript. They mostly happen on the client-side. WebAssembly, on the other hand, has secured sandboxes.
4. Code — The code size in WebAssembly is really small as compared to JavaScript.
5. DOM Manipulation — You have to use JavaScript to edit or even interact with any web page in WebAssembly. But in JavaScript, you can get direct access from DOM.
6. Learning — WebAssembly is really difficult to understand. That’s because it’s a low-level language. On the contrary, JavaScript is easy to learn.
7. Debugging — It’s fairly difficult to debug in WebAssembly. Why? Low-level language. But JavaScript is easy to learn.

When to Use WebAssembly?

Use WebAssembly when you want to do tasks that need more computations. Apart from this, WebAssembly is also best when you want to move code written in languages including Rust to the web. Further, only use WebAssembly when you want your web to perform best, not better! Following are also some cases where you can use WebAssembly:

1. Hybrid-platform apps.
2. Apps with high security.
3. CPU-intensive games.
4. Streaming web.
5. Image-caching apps.

When to Use JavaScript?
Use it when you want to improve user experience by adding varying features and tools in your web app. JavaScript is also preferred when you need rapid prototyping. In case your app’s interactivity depends heavily on direct DOM manipulation then prefer JavaScript over WebAssembly.

You can also use JavaScript while creating:

1. Mobile games
2. Mobile apps
3. Apps that are powered by Node.js