Spring GDS 25th Anniversary
A logistics company that ships to 190 countries built something to ship to itself.
WebAssembly (WASM)
What is WebAssembly?
WebAssembly is a binary instruction format that runs in the browser at close to native speed. Code written in C, C++, Rust, or Go gets compiled to a compact WASM module, and the browser executes it inside the same sandbox that runs JavaScript. The two work side by side. JavaScript handles the DOM and the glue, WASM handles the heavy computation.
The reason it exists is speed. JavaScript is fast enough for most interface work, but it struggles with anything CPU-bound: video encoding, 3D rendering, physics, cryptography, large-scale data parsing. WASM ships pre-compiled bytecode that the engine can validate and run without the parse-and-optimize cycle JavaScript goes through. Figma's design editor moved its rendering core to WebAssembly years ago, which is part of why a browser tab can push pixels like a desktop app.
WASM is not a replacement for JavaScript and it does not touch the DOM on its own. It runs in a memory-safe sandbox, talks to the page through a JavaScript bridge, and shines when there is genuine number-crunching to do. For a standard marketing site, it adds complexity you do not need. For a CAD tool, a game, or an in-browser audio workstation, it changes what is possible.
WebAssembly at Dallonses
We reach for WebAssembly when the browser hits a wall. A client came to us with a configurator that needed to render and recalculate thousands of geometry updates in real time, and plain JavaScript could not keep the frame rate steady. We moved the math into a Rust module compiled to WASM and kept the UI in the existing stack. The interaction went from stuttering to smooth, on the same hardware.
Most of our web development work never needs it, and we say so. WASM earns its place when there is real computation involved, not because it sounds modern. When it does fit, we treat it as one tool inside a larger custom web application, wired carefully to the JavaScript layer and measured against actual performance budgets rather than benchmarks that look good in a slide.
Pushing work into the browser that JavaScript can't carry? Let's look at it together.
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