Updated March 30, 2023
Introduction to WebAssembly vs Javascript
Webassembly vs Javascript is defined as, the web assembly is a new type of code which has compact binary code-format and that code can be run on modern web-browsers, it is like a low-level assembly language and it allows the interaction between programs and their host environment, whereas, the Javascript is a scripting language which can be used in web development on client-side as well as on the server-side that allows us to make dynamic and attractive web-pages, the functions of it may check a web form before submitting and it makes sure that all the fields of it have been filled.
Head to Head Comparison between WebAssembly vs Javascript (Infographics)
Below are the top 10 differences between WebAssembly vs Javascript:
Comparison Table of Webassembly vs Javascript
| S.N. | Webassembly | Javascript |
| 1. | It is developed by W3C, Mozilla, Microsoft, Google, Apple. | Whereas, it is developed by Netscape. |
| 2. | Inside the web browser, it has a faster loading time because it only needs to load the already compiled files. | Whereas, to load JavaScript it is slower than webassembly as the browser needs to load all the “.js” files which are narrative. |
| 3. | The execution of code in webassembly is faster than the Javascript. | Whereas, the execution of code is slower in Javascript. |
| 4. | It is not a programming language. | Where it is a programming language. |
| 5. | Webassembly allows the execution of the applications on the browser which are written in c or c++, and it provides a virtual machine that running at the top of the environment of Javascript. | Whereas it is not designed to support local applications but it is not designed for oriented infrastructure to agree with its objects. |
| 6. | It delivered the output via a small-sized binary format. | Where the Javascript delivered its output in a human-readable format. |
| 7. | It is just faster. | But it is highly flexible. |
| 8. | This allows the code to be viewed, debugged, and written by hand as it is strongly typed. | On the other hand, it is dynamically typed because it does not require declaring the variables explicitly before they are used. |
| 9. | It is designed to execute and integrate standalone in its environments as well as in other environment. | Where it is mainly used for validation which allows executing of complex actions and also allowing the interaction between different websites. |
| 10. | The purpose of it is to enable high-performance applications on the web page. | Whereas, this adds dynamic and interactive elements to websites which is the purpose in this than webassembly. |
Key differences of Webassembly vs Javascript
- Performance and loading time:
In Javascript when we called the browser which is inside of it then the file of it has been downloaded first and then get parsed and after that, the source code has been converted from with the help of parser into byte code, and in the browser, the Javascript engine executes the code, the Javascript engine is very powerful hence the performance and the loading time is very fast as compared to the webassembly.
- Coding:
We can easily write the code in Javascript and code which we wrote is in human-readable format and that can be saved in .js file format, when we want to use that inside the browser then we need to use a tag such as <script>, whereas, webassembly allows to write code in text format which difficult to write and it can be saved in “.wat” format, it cannot allow executing the “.wat” file inside the browser so that has been converted by using tools which are available online.
- Execution:
The execution of code in webassembly is just 20% slower than the execution of code in JavaScript, webassembly is faster in execution than Javascript, if we have some source code containing functions then first it needs to be parsed then it converts all the strings into tokens and generates abstract syntax tree when this generated then V8 will go directly to the machine code then machine code generated and then we have to compile the functions there is no need to make any attempt to increase the speed, whereas, in web assembly during the compilation it already has optimization so there is no need to parse and also we have an optimized binary which can directly hook into the backend and then it generates the machine code and at the front end all the optimizations have been done by the compiler, it means the execution of web assembly is more efficient than JavaScript because it has few steps in the process.
- Memory management:
In JavaScript the memory assignment can be done, when variables have been created and when the memory is not in use then it released the memory and that memory is added into the garbage collection, whereas, webassembly stored the memory in array buffer that hold the related data, by using Javascript API we can allocate memory in webassembly, it stores memory in the form of an array which is called as a flat memory model and that model is easy to understand, and it is helpful to perform the execution, but it has very complex calculation which takes more time and it does not support garbage collection due to that the memory cannot be reused so that memory is wasted in this case, so we can say that this is the disadvantage of webassembly.
- Debugging:
Javascript provides output in human-readable format and it can be easy for debugging also we can add breakpoints in the code of Javascript and inside the browser, the code of it can easily debug, whereas, in webassembly the code is in text format, that can easy to read but it very difficult for debugging, inside the browser the Firefox will allow us to view the code of webassembly in “.wat” format, it cannot allow adding a breakpoint in “.wat” files of it and in future it may be available.
Conclusion
In this article, we conclude that the performance of the web assembly is a low-level byte code for the web which is faster and efficient than JavaScript and the loading time and the execution time is also faster than the JavaScript, as we have seen in comparison web assembly may replace the Javascript.
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