I'm learning to become a web developer, full stack is my goal for now. I must say that while the frontend would seem like a nice thing to focus on, it seems like utter madness to me in its current state, with so much inelegant complexity. Sass, Angular, Typescript, React etc are impressive technologies which can allow us to do amazing things but it all seems like hacks on top of hacks to patch and force the current standards of the web into doing things they were never meant to do. The frontend ecosystem has obviously evolved (wasn't designed), into what it is right now, because of the limitations of html, CSS and Javascript which were never intended to provide complex UI nor emulate native apps functionalities.
Will the advent of WASM allow HTML/CSS/Javascript to finally be used only for what they were designed to do while other more adequate languages and frameworks (compiled to WASM) will be used to tackle the complex UI stuff, restoring some order and sanity? Or will the frontend ecosystem get even crazier ?
I would say, the definition of the word complex is already the answer to your question.
Marco Alka
Software Engineer, Technical Consultant & Mentor
I do not believe that WASM will solve anything. It's specific use-case is to create real applications which run in the browser, like AAA computer games. For homepages, it will probably not really be useful, as it introduces a lot of new dependencies and needed knowledge and build steps.
I think that the complexity will become sane, once people become sane. React is not a universal solution. The same is true for Angular, Aurelia, Sass, TypeScript, etc. Once people learn when to use what and (more importantly) when not to use what, our lives will become a lot easier.
Example: Just look at all the people using MEAN or MERN to kick of their small homepage projects. Their projects would progress a lot faster and be a lot more maintainable and performant, if they just stayed away from those frameworks and libraries. It's time to remember KISS and DRY.