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4 posts about WebAssembly. Every summary links to the original.
See the idea
AssemblyScript is a TypeScript-like way to target WebAssembly. This explainer shows how source becomes a sandboxed module, crosses explicit host boundaries, and fits performance-sensitive services.
The Good Stuff
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The Kotlin Foundation wrapped up its fourth Google Summer of Code program in 2026, supporting two projects by Ayako Hayasaka and Mark Seif Khalil. Ayako implemented tail-call support in the Kotlin/Wasm backend, using return_call and return_call_ref instructions to avoid stack growth in recursive programs, and then found and fixed a missing optimization for return_call in the V8 engine that caused a performance regression. Mark built a database and automated pipeline to collect and structure scattered information about where Kotlin is taught worldwide, covering courses, curricula, repositories, and learning platforms. In Ayako’s benchmarks, several recursive patterns achieved 1.7 to 4.3 times faster execution at a recursion depth of 10,000, and at a depth of one million, the same programs crashed without tail calls but completed successfully with them. The education landscape project now provides a reusable foundation for monitoring Kotlin’s presence in education and identifying trends and gaps.
Kotlin Toolchain 0.12.0 extends its multiplatform build and publishing capabilities with multiplatform library publication, preview support for Wasm applications, command-line Compose Hot Reload, and broader IDE and terminal improvements. Libraries use the existing publishing configuration and produce a common API, per-platform artifacts, sources, module metadata, plus commonized and platform-specific cinterop bindings; Compose Multiplatform resources are not yet included. wasm-js/app modules can be built into ready-to-use web applications, run with kotlin run, customized through resources, and supplied transitive npm dependencies from Kotlin Multiplatform libraries. The release also reduces default Maven Central files, supports Compose Hot Reload through an MCP server, and recommends project-root-relative // dependencies while retaining the older syntax. It raises minimum compilation requirements to JDK 17 and Kotlin 2.2.20, updates bundled versions including Kotlin 2.4.10 and JDK 25, and recommends IntelliJ IDEA 2026.2.1 or newer for the latest features.
Google announces LiteRT.js, a JavaScript binding of LiteRT that runs .tflite AI and ML models directly in web browsers. It targets local inference for JavaScript and TypeScript applications, with privacy benefits, zero server costs, and low latency, while providing smoother deployment for existing .tflite models. Through WebAssembly, it exposes LiteRT’s optimized runtime across XNNPACK CPU, ML Drift with WebGPU, and experimental WebNN for NPUs; LiteRT Torch supports one-step PyTorch conversion, and AI Edge Quantizer enables layer-specific quantization. The initial release includes the @litertjs/core npm package, demos, and examples covering YOLO26, depth estimation, and Real-ESRGAN upscaling. In controlled benchmarks on a 2024 Apple MacBook Pro with M4, it outperformed other web runtimes by up to 3x, while WebGPU or WebNN delivered 5–60x speedups over CPU execution; results may vary with hardware, thermal conditions, and browser drivers.
Shopify describes using WebAssembly (Wasm) outside the browser to run untrusted Partner code on its own infrastructure, reducing partners’ need to operate scalable web services and avoiding network latency for time-sensitive customizations. Wasm provides a sandboxed, stack-based environment with explicit host imports, protected call stacks, and runtime type checking, while targeting near-native performance and multiple source languages. Shopify wraps Fastly’s open-source Lucet runtime and compiler in a Rust web service called the Wasm Engine, which manages module I/O and storage and applies results during runtime processes such as web requests. In a test executing 100,000 modules per minute for roughly five minutes, Lucet execution hovered around 100 μs and total p99 execution time was about 4 ms. Shopify selected AssemblyScript, with TypeScript-like syntax, for first-class developer support and is extending its tooling, SDKs, monitoring, and language support.
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