Update 2026-01-22-ten-years-of-webassembly-a-retrospective.md

Author: ericgregory

_posts/2026-01-22-ten-years-of-webassembly-a-retrospective.md

@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ github_name: "ericgregory"
 
 In April of 2015, Luke Wagner made the first commits to a new repository called `WebAssembly/design`, adding a [high-level design document](https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/commit/12ee148fb5cfa33331dbffadae06752b1759a7bf) for a "binary format to serve as a web compilation target."
 
-Four years later, in December 2019, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) [officially embraced WebAssembly (Wasm) as the "fourth language of the web"](https://www.w3.org/press-releases/2019/wasm/). Today, Wasm is used in web applications like [Google Earth](https://web.dev/case-studies/earth-webassembly), streaming video services like [Amazon Prime Video](https://www.amazon.science/blog/how-prime-video-updates-its-app-for-more-than-8-000-device-types) and [Disney Plus](https://medium.com/disney-streaming/introducing-the-disney-application-development-kit-adk-ad85ca139073), and game engines like [Unity](https://docs.unity3d.com/6000.0/Documentation/Manual/webassembly-2023.html). Wasm runs on countless embedded devices, and cloud computing providers use Wasm to provide Functions-as-a-Service (FaaS) and serverless functionality.
+Four years later, in December 2019, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) [officially embraced WebAssembly (Wasm) as the "fourth language of the web"](https://www.w3.org/press-releases/2019/wasm/). Today, Wasm is used in web applications like [Google Earth](https://web.dev/case-studies/earth-webassembly) and [Adobe Photoshop](https://web.dev/articles/ps-on-the-web), streaming video services like [Amazon Prime Video](https://www.amazon.science/blog/how-prime-video-updates-its-app-for-more-than-8-000-device-types) and [Disney Plus](https://medium.com/disney-streaming/introducing-the-disney-application-development-kit-adk-ad85ca139073), and game engines like [Unity](https://docs.unity3d.com/6000.0/Documentation/Manual/webassembly-2023.html). Wasm runs on countless embedded devices, and cloud computing providers use Wasm to provide Functions-as-a-Service (FaaS) and serverless functionality.
 
 The road to standardization (and understated ubiquity) would require the teams behind the major browsers to unite behind an approach to solve a problem that many had tried, and failed, to solve before.
 
@@ -56,7 +56,7 @@ Bastien recalls internal resistance to the name. "We know it's going to be used
 
 This writer has certainly used the "neither web nor assembly" line more than once, and so did several of the Wasm co-designers I interviewed, but Wagner gently pushes back on the characterization. 
 
-"Setting aside the asm.js path dependency, perhaps 'bytecode' or 'intermediate language' would've been a bit more accurate," he says, "but when people say it's not 'web' because it's being used outside the web... well, what's the definition of the web? Is it only things in browsers? The W3C paints a much broader picture of the [open web platform](https://www.w3.org/standards/) that I think covers a lot more of the places where WebAssembly runs today and where we want it to run in the future."
+"Setting aside the Asm.js path dependency, perhaps 'bytecode' or 'intermediate language' would've been a bit more accurate," he says, "but when people say it's not 'web' because it's being used outside the web... well, what's the definition of the web? Is it only things in browsers? The W3C paints a much broader picture of the [open web platform](https://www.w3.org/standards/) that I think covers a lot more of the places where WebAssembly runs today and where we want it to run in the future."
 
 ## "Ship as fast as you humanly can before this whole coalition falls apart."