⚡ WebAssembly the practical way

A practical book for web developers looking to get started with WebAssembly, even if you don't know any C or C++.
Updated May 2020
Book cover image

What you'll learn

Forget toy examples; learn to compile real-world software to WebAssembly.

🚀

Port C/C++ tools to the browser, including jq, awk, and coreutils.

🎮

Port games like Pong, Tetris, and Pacman to the web.

Run WebAssembly on the cloud, in serverless functions.

Run WebAssembly modules in threads using WebWorkers.

📂

Process user files in your apps using virtual file systems.

🌟

Recognize use cases where WebAssembly shines.

Buy the book

Not convinced? Check out a book sample
or the table of contents.


What readers think of the book

WebAssembly is constantly evolving and it can be hard to find concise and up-to-date information to learn how to wield its awesomeness. Level Up with WebAssembly was the tl;dr I was looking for.

Jonathan Beri

When I joined the Chrome WebAssembly team as their Product Manager and needed to get up to speed on using WebAssembly, I used this book. I had a complex codebase that I wanted to bring to the web and I directly used the examples in this book to successfully accomplish the port.

Thomas Nattestad

The book is concise, example-packed, and implementation-oriented. The book shows approaches that have worked but also those that have failed, possibly saving developers time by avoiding dead ends.

A sneak peek of what you'll build:

My personal favorite is porting a C++ Pacman clone to the browser:

Porting Pacman to the web

Port command-line tools like diff, and use them in your web apps!
(included in the Complete Edition package)

Porting the diff command-line utility to the web

In the Capstone project, you'll build a web app that
clusters data points, and plots the results interactively:
(included in the Complete Edition package)

Porting the KMeans algorithm with WebAssembly

How deep do you want to go?

The Book

The Minimalist

$29

  •  

  • Updated May 2020
    Book
    The Book
    PDF with ~100 pages, jam-packed with WebAssembly awesomeness. All future updates to the book included.
Buy for $29

The Starter Kit

Hit the Ground Running

$49

  • Includes The Book plus:

  • new august 2019
    Guide
    Serverless WebAssembly
    A guide to serverless WebAssembly. Includes code + deploy instructions for AWS, GCP, Azure, Cloudflare & Fastly.

  • Cheat Sheet
    Cheat Sheets
    The most common command-line options you'll need for Emscripten + reference code snippets.

  • Guide
    Quickstart Guide to WebWorkers and FileReader
    Guide to two Web APIs used in the book to complement WebAssembly.
Buy for $49

The Complete Edition

Everything But the Kitchen Sink

$129

  • Includes Starter Kit plus:

  • Guide
    Guide to Porting UNIX
    tools to the web

    Learn to port awk, diff and coreutils tools such as cut, sort and uniq!

  • Capstone
    Capstone Project
    Practice what you learned: build an interactive web tool that uses WebAssembly to cluster data points.

  • Screencasts
    15 Command-Line Screencasts
    With play/pause controls and copy/paste functionality.
Buy for $129

See team discounts here.