Rust and WebAssembly

Those of you who follow my rantings and ravings on Twitter may have noticed a trend lately. I’ve been retweeting and posting a bit about WebAssembly, in addition to my usual programming language posts.

I’ve also been hinting at the idea that I may or may not be working on a top secret project beneath my secret island lair in Northern Connecticut.

At long last, the Interagency Cabal on SuperSecret Hidden Things (ICSSHT) has granted me permission to discuss my current project with everyone.

I am proud to announce that I’m working on a book for the Pragmatic Programmers. The title hasn’t been set in stone yet, but the book will be about programming WebAssembly with Rust.

Before I start talking up how amazing this book is going to be, and how life-altering it will be for everyone, I need to take a moment to say a few things.

First, even for a veteran author like myself, it is impossible to find the right words to describe how honored I am to be able to publish a book with Pragmatic Programmers. Their books have consistently been a cut above the rest, always occupy a place of honor on my bookshelf, and are among the only technical books that I’ve ever enjoyed enough to read a second (or third!) time. I can only hope that my own efforts will do the brand and other Pragmatic Programmers authors justice.

Second, WebAssembly is literally going to change everything. It’s not just going to change the way we build web applications, but it’s going to change the way we think about and build applications in general — from the bottom of the deepest crevasses of Kubernetes clusters to the browsers on mobile and desktop devices.

In this book, I’ll be taking you (assuming you read it) on a journey from learning the core fundamentals of WebAssembly to building JavaScript integrations to even more advanced integrations like writing your own hosts — all while leveraging the elegance, expressivity, and safety of the Rust programming language.

At the moment, I’m about 2/3rds done on first drafts, we are capturing…er…locating technical reviewers for the first few chapters right now. Once the early portions of the book have been reviewed, then I believe we’ll be able to start releasing content through Pragmatic Programmers’ awesome beta program.

Stay tuned here for more updates! I’ll be sharing timelines as we get official dates, as well as other goodies like links to get early access to the book and I’ll let everyone know when we’ve got a shiny new cover, etc.

Over the past 17 years, I have written or co-written 21 different technical books and 2 fantasy books. Usually, by the time I get to about the 70% mark, my inspiration has been replaced by burnout, fatigue, and the “death march” toward the final deadlines.

That’s not the case with this book. I’m more excited about this book now than when I first pitched it. I’m even more inspired by WebAssembly and Rust than when I started writing, and above all, I am more proud of the work I’ve done on this book than any of my prior works and I hope that means you’ll enjoy reading it as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it!

Stay tuned!