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
I like it! https://daneden.github.io/animate.css For those of you who visited hello.forum.devtalk.com you’ll have seen it in action on ...
New
AstonJ
Which WebAssembly language/s interest you? I just discovered AssemblyScript (portal | thread) which looks interesting! Here are some of...
New
AstonJ
Wondering if anyone has any thoughts on choosing between these two languages for WebAssembly? I definitely want to explore wasm, and rea...
New
New
KnowledgeIsPower
Hey, I have migrated by blog from Pelican to Astro (static site generator) Please give comments or feedback, thanks!
New
Fl4m3Ph03n1x
Background I am trying to recycle myself and improve my knowledge about Phoenix. With 1.7 now out, this seems like a good opportunity. ...
New
Reinis
For the last few months I’ve been (re)-learning vanilla CSS. Initially I did not ‘get’ how to structure CSS to take advantage of the ‘cas...
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
guaip
I’ve been doing front-end as a freelancer for 15 years. I have some PHP background and still do some backend stuff to this day, but I spe...
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

Other popular topics Top

New
AstonJ
Do the test and post your score :nerd_face: :keyboard: If possible, please add info such as the keyboard you’re using, the layout (Qw...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Create efficient, elegant software tests in pytest, Python's most powerful testing framework. Brian Okken @brianokken Edited by Kat...
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
PragmaticBookshelf
Author Spotlight Mike Riley @mriley This month, we turn the spotlight on Mike Riley, author of Portable Python Projects. Mike’s book ...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Author Spotlight Rebecca Skinner @RebeccaSkinner Welcome to our latest author spotlight, where we sit down with Rebecca Skinner, auth...
New
New
AstonJ
This is cool! DEEPSEEK-V3 ON M4 MAC: BLAZING FAST INFERENCE ON APPLE SILICON We just witnessed something incredible: the largest open-s...
New
NewsBot
Node.js v22.14.0 has been released. Link: Release 2025-02-11, Version 22.14.0 'Jod' (LTS), @aduh95 · nodejs/node · GitHub
New
mindriot
Ok, well here are some thoughts and opinions on some of the ergonomic keyboards I have, I guess like mini review of each that I use enoug...
New