AstonJ

AstonJ

Swift vs Rust for WASM/WebAssembly

Wondering if anyone has any thoughts on choosing between these two languages for WebAssembly?

I definitely want to explore wasm, and really love the idea of learning both of these, however, I can only squeeze one in right now.

Anyone have any thoughts? Which might be the easier route? Which will be more useful/fully featured/supported? etc.

Here are some pros and cons (from a personal perspective so far):

Rust

  • Can also be used with Elixir/Erlang nifs
  • Can also be used in other areas such as general web dev
  • Huge community support

Swift

  • Can be used for iOS/macOS apps
  • While can be used for other areas (such as web dev too - I get the feeling not quite as well as Rust)
  • Huge Apple support

Most Liked

SmithyTT

SmithyTT

Rust.

Swift for WebAssembly is not quite there yet…

herbert

herbert

Author of Hands-on Rust

I don’t have a lot of experience with Swift, so I can’t really comment on it. Rust works very well with web assembly (some assembly required, heh). One of the reasons I picked up Rust was that it made it easy to write tutorials and include a web-runnable version (my Roguelike Tutorial series has each example as a playable web game - e.g. https://bfnightly.bracketproductions.com/rustbook/wasm/chapter-74-darkcity/ ).

There are downsides. If you link with C libraries, chances are you have to come up with some shims to handle the bits of the C library that don’t exist in WASM-land. Also WebGL is almost but not quite compatible with regular GL - so for graphics you’ll have to tweak things a bit.

herbert

herbert

Author of Hands-on Rust

I may have messed up the link, sorry! http://bfnightly.bracketproductions.com/rustbook/ should work.

Rust is a systems language, so its harder than Python and other very high-level languages. It tries really hard to not surprise you, and once you have the basics down it’s a relatively smooth learning curve. Some things - like threads - are much easier than other languages. Other things like the borrow checker will cause a bit of head-scratching at first.

Where Next?

Popular Frontend topics Top

AstonJ
Sprinkles of JS, or full frontend frameworks? What do you use and why?
New
AstonJ
Inspired by @dbernheisel’s post here, which CSS framework do you use and why?
New
New
MikhailPertsev
Finally, I am going to enhance my css skills! I have always somehow ignored this, but now I finally decided to understand animations, tr...
New
First poster: bot
A 3D racing game built with ClojureScript, React and ThreeJS
New
riyajohnson
When it comes to selecting a framework for a development project, it’s crucial to make an informed decision. With so many options availab...
New
DevynClark
Front-end Developer Griffin, USA As a student in college looking for a way to break into Front-end Web Development, the rise of things s...
New
jaeyson
Hi Elixir and React friends! I read a post (Stephen Bussey - React in LiveView: How and Why?) on use case for reaching react for complex...
New
NKTgLaw
Introduction The NKTg Law on Varying Inertia describes the tendency of an object in motion depending on its position, velocity, and mass...
New
max_alyokhin
I created a web-synthesizer that generates sound from the binary code of any files. It can synthesize sound directly in the browser, or b...
New

Other popular topics Top

AstonJ
Or looking forward to? :nerd_face:
503 15149 280
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Rust is an exciting new programming language combining the power of C with memory safety, fearless concurrency, and productivity boosters...
New
AstonJ
This looks like a stunning keycap set :orange_heart: A LEGENDARY KEYBOARD LIVES ON When you bought an Apple Macintosh computer in the e...
New
Exadra37
I am asking for any distro that only has the bare-bones to be able to get a shell in the server and then just install the packages as we ...
New
DevotionGeo
The V Programming Language Simple language for building maintainable programs V is already mentioned couple of times in the forum, but I...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Build efficient applications that exploit the unique benefits of a pure functional language, learning from an engineer who uses Haskell t...
New
AstonJ
Was just curious to see if any were around, found this one: I got 51/100: Not sure if it was meant to buy I am sure at times the b...
New
New
Fl4m3Ph03n1x
Background Lately I am in a quest to find a good quality TTS ai generation tool to run locally in order to create audio for some videos I...
New
xiji2646-netizen
Woke up to this today: Claude Code’s complete source code exposed via npm source map. Not a snippet. All 512,000 lines. 1,900 TypeScript ...
New