This document summarizes recent developments in web technology over the past two years. It discusses the failures of Firefox OS and Tizen mobile platforms to gain traction, as well as the growth of smartphones and progressive web apps. It also covers new proposals for private class state and decorators in JavaScript, the continued development of WebAssembly, and how the web remains messy but compatible over decades of growth.

1. Web Evolution in Action 2
Brendan Eich
@BrendanEich

2. Two years ago, I said:

3. What’s at Stake on the Web
5.6
BILLION

4. We all deserve a
better Web

5. Stuff Happened since 2013
• Firefox OS ($200M?) failed to get traction
• Tizen ($10B?) failed to get traction
• Smartphones and the Web grew together
• Flipkart took down its mobile website
• Flipkart came back as a Progressive Web App

7. EWM FTW!

8. What’s the Problem?
• Nothing, really (walled gardens, crap security aside)
• The Web is not going away
• Web Developers are better off than ever
• The Web is still messy
• It always will be, because it grows compatibly
• Compatibility breaks happen only over decades

9. Project Leif
The Bieber of his day
(The late ‘70s)

10. Leif more recently
Charged with Heroin Possession

11. Project Seif Creator
(Not ever a teen idol)

12. Crock is a Minimalist

14. The Web isn’t Minimalist

18. The Web is not Unix

19. Hot from Nov. TC39
• Google is Microsoft
• Microsoft is Mozilla
• Apple is Apple
• Yehuda Katz and Allen Wirfs-Brock proposing
#private state for classes
• @wycats’ decorators proposal

21. WebAssembly
• Started from asm.js, which (V8 helped) killed PNaCl
• Self-verifying, goto-free AST bitcode, not bytecode.
• Mozilla, Google, Microsoft and Apple fully on board
• ML specification (definitional interpreter, with tests)
• Emscripten support via JS wasm=>asm.js shim
• Engines implementing native WebAssembly support

22. WebAssembly isn’t LISP
but it does have an s-expression syntax for view-source
and tooling convenience

23. WebAssembly is Unix

26. Demos