7 years seem to be a long time, but for something that operates on such a low level it isn't. Rust also exists for 12 years now, but got the most traction in the last 2-3 years.
From my point of view wasm is currently in a state where a lot of companies and people are learning. Most of the toolchains had to mature before the broader mass of developers (who have an interest in this technology) took a look into it.
Yeah, you are right, it is lesser used than e.g JavaScript, but tbh it also has a different target audience. You probably can build UI by using wasm. But why don't use JavaScript, which is way more comfortable and has a bigger community around it? (Unless you have some specific needs)
As a web developer you don't need wasm right now. If you are doing some lower level work (like trying to run AI models/training) and you really need the performance, then wasm gets pretty interesting.
Most of the cool wasm projects I've seen in the past few months/ years were open source ports of games or emulators compiled to wasm (like Doom 3 ), which really ran very great. And my guess is that the broader development community is currently doing exactly this: they are playing around with wasm to learn for what use cases wasm could be a great fit.
(more known Wasm users are for example Figma or Google Earth. Iirc I've read that BBC is currently exploring if they can use wasm for their media players)
Yeah, you are right, it is lesser used than e.g JavaScript, but tbh it also has a different target audience. You probably can build UI by using wasm. But why don't use JavaScript, which is way more comfortable and has a bigger community around it? (Unless you have some specific needs) As a web developer you don't need wasm right now. If you are doing some lower level work (like trying to run AI models/training) and you really need the performance, then wasm gets pretty interesting.
Most of the cool wasm projects I've seen in the past few months/ years were open source ports of games or emulators compiled to wasm (like Doom 3 ), which really ran very great. And my guess is that the broader development community is currently doing exactly this: they are playing around with wasm to learn for what use cases wasm could be a great fit.
(more known Wasm users are for example Figma or Google Earth. Iirc I've read that BBC is currently exploring if they can use wasm for their media players)