Mozilla research project offshoot, WebAssembly was first announced in mid 2015 as a low-level programming language for in-browser client-side scripting, designed to be faster to parse and execute than JavaScript.
But, JavaScript developers are still to get their feet wet with WebAssembly after 4 years, according to a survey published in the State of JavaScript 2019 report; albeit WebAssembly has drawn lots of attention but not many developers have used it.
The report noted that among JavaScript developers, only 8.6 percent (1,444) of the 16,694 developers stated that they were aware of WebAssembly, even as WebAssembly has been touted as a mechanism for speeding up web applications, with support for languages like C, C++, and Rust for client-side and server-side web development.
WebAssembly provides a binary code format that's smaller over the wire, loads faster, and better than JavaScript as regards executing intensive computational operations on the browser.
The State of JavaScript 2019 report is based on a survey of 27,717 JavaScript developers from around the world, including everything from JavaScript features to frameworks, utilities, and testing tools. It's major highlights are as follows: Service workers, which is supposed to act as proxy servers between web applications, the browser and network, was not used by 54 percent of the respondents, even though they were aware of it.
And 58.5 percent of respondents said they had used TypeScript, and would still be using it; while 35.8 percent had used the Angular JavaScript framework, but stated that they would not use it going forward. Only 21.9 percent said they would continue to use Angular JavaScript framework.
It is pertinent to note that dissatisfaction with Angular JavaScript framework had risen among developers since the 2017 report.
Other interesting reports include that of Electron, a tool used for building cross-platform apps for desktop with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, haven been used by 25.6 percent of respondents who also confirmed that they'd use it again. Though Electron had trailed React Native framework at 27.2 percent.
The React JavaScript UI library got the affirmative from 71.7 percent of respondents, who also stated they would still use it again.
Additionally, JavaScript promises was used by nearly 95 percent of the 20,543 developers who stated they were aware of it, while the Local Storage browser API was used by 89.5 percent of the 20,021 developers. The full report was produced by Sacha Greif and Raphael Benitte, and can be found here!
No comments