@surma
Web Advocate. Internetrovert. Craving simplicity, finding it nowhere. Engineer @Google
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I don’t think TypeScript “takes over” JavaScript :D It’s synergetic, not adversarial. But that just as side note. It’s hard to pick favorites, honestly. Wasm is definitely exciting and very fun. I am also looking forward to WHATWG streams being universally available. They are so versatile and flexible. WebGPU is also cool. SO MUCH IS HAPPENING.
I have no hard data to support this, but I don’t think WebAssembly will help much . The problems we see are big monolithic chunks of JavaScript, forced layouts and forced paints. JavaScript is extraordinarily fast considering it’s a weakly typed, originally interpreted language. In V8, JavaScript and WebAssembly have the same peak performance. Sometimes it’s harder to get there with JavaScript, though. So WebAssembly might make some cases faster, but the biggest problem is that there’s no easy way to break up work into smaller chunks and yielding to the browser in between these chunks. Additionally, all of this is still happening on the main thread, when a lot of the work web apps do could be happening in a worker to keep rendering much more responsive.
Both, really. Houdini, for me, is more of a “power-user” feature. I expect a couple of well-versed people to build modules for Houdini that everyone can then use. That doesn’t mean that the average web developer can’t write Houdini modules, they just might not get the same mileage out of it. It’s practically impossible for one person to know every API browsers offer nowadays, so you need to know where your interest lies and what problems you encounter on a day-by-day basis.
I suffered through a burnout while working at my own company (which failed miserably), so I know my signs of burn out. My alarm bells go off when topics that should be exciting are not and I am more nihilistic (than usual). But these signs are different from person to person. If I notice these things, I know I need to take a break and “do one for the soul”, as Paul Lewis says. Find a project that I want to do, with no connection to my day job. Sometimes it’s even better to put away the technology and enjoy some sports, the outside, and other non-technology hobbies (currently that’s photography). In general keeping an eye on work/life balance has proven quite effective for me at preventing burnout.
That’s... a lot. And those are very broad questions. To cover a subset of your topics: Matt Brubeck’s blog series “Let’s build a browser engine” is great to learn about layout and CSS. Mariko’s series “Inside look at modern web browser” might be of interest!
I think AAA games were already possible on the web. I think with WebAssembly we might see that it becomes easier for big companies to re-use their existing tooling without having to sacrifice performance. I guess Wasm might make it more likely :D