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WebAssembly
design
Web Development2015–2026
WebAssembly / design

design

WebAssembly Design Documents

Web DevelopmentProductivity
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
196Distinct people
260Mentions
2Explicit recommenders
11.6KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

WebAssembly Design Documents

GitHub

Where it is used

  • Shopify — Shopify uses WebAssembly within a Wasm Engine to execute partner modules on its infrastructure. The engine is invoked during runtime processes such as web requests to perform functions. Source

What people are saying

I love the fact that they chose s-expressions for the textual representation of WASM[0][1]. [0]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/WebAssembly/Underst... [1]:…

kuwze used a recommendation phrase. 2 indexed comments match. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 10:56:20 AM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year260 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2015-06-17 16:27:29 UTC to 2026-05-03 00:07:52 UTC.

02040602015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 53 mentions; 5 submissions, 48 comments20152016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 66 mentions; 1 submissions, 65 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 66 mentions; 5 submissions, 61 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 16 mentions; 0 submissions, 16 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 12 mentions; 0 submissions, 12 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 11 mentions; 0 submissions, 11 comments20202021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 13 mentions; 3 submissions, 10 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 1 submissions, 5 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 0 submissions, 7 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 0 submissions, 5 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC53548
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC66165
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC66561
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC16016
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC12012
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC11011
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC13310
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC615
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC707
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC505
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202

What Hacker News says

5 sources
kevingadd·Jul 14, 2025
My understanding is that chaining compressors is a classic technique for image compression. IIRC PNG and Basis are both implemented as initial transformation/pre-filtering/conditioning pass(es) designed to make the image data more compressible before feeding it to a codec like gzip or zstd. This definitely works for things that aren't images too. I previously proved that you could improve the compression ratio for WebAssembly significantly by performing lossless transforms on the module before feeding it to gzip or brotli (though the gains are much smaller for brotli since it's so good to begin with): https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/1180
In Lossless Float Image Compression
xmcqdpt2·Apr 10, 2025
See for example https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/1463 In general, if NaN1 and NaN2 are different (there are 23 bits in a NaN that can be set to an arbitrary value, the NaN payload) then combining them isn’t deterministic. NaN1 + NaN2 might produce NaN1 or NaN2 depending on the processor model, instructions etc. IEEE754 only says that the result must be one of the two input NaNs (or at least it did last time I checked the standard.) In practice, NaN payloads are seldomly used so it doesn’t matter much. NaN canonicalization involves transforming all NaNs to specific NaN values, and AFAIK it’s expensive because technically you need to check for NaN all the time.
In Show HN: Obelisk – a WASM-based deterministic workflow engine

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