Ask HN: Are there any jobs yet in WebAssembly? When I Googled about it recently, I saw one post at Apple and maybe one at Google. But even then, WASM was just listed as a nice-to-have on top of other job specifications. |
Ask HN: Are there any jobs yet in WebAssembly? When I Googled about it recently, I saw one post at Apple and maybe one at Google. But even then, WASM was just listed as a nice-to-have on top of other job specifications. |
Would you say the same about LLVM? How is it any different? I've never heard anyone say anything like "oh, well LLVM is a technology on top of ..." They're both compile targets that run within a VM right?
Now, I'd agree that there aren't many jobs "in LLVM". There are just a handful of folks working on LLVM compilers and VMs. For the same reason I wouldn't expect any jobs "in WASM" any time soon, other than ones working on compilers targeting the format or enabling other language runtimes to consume it.
And e.g. if we're talking about improving WebAssembly support in LLVM, I'd primarily consider that an LLVM job: Familarity with LLVM, compilers, ... is probably more important than knowing WebAssembly. If you work on a project targeting WebAssembly in the end, knowing the source language (and if targeting the browser, browser APIs) is probably the primary part.
I agree that "on top of others" wasn't the best wording. Another attempt at describing what I meant: You're unlikely to be a "WebAssembly developer", in the same way that you won't a be a "LLVM IR" developer, and "x86 assembly" developers are rare. Way more commonly, knowing about those lower-level things are an add-on to the primary label, e.g. useful things for a C++ developer to know. I don't think WebAssembly is big enough that a specialist role of e.g. "WebAssembly on $platform performance expert" would be a job description yet, even if there's maybe already a few people being effectively that.
Thanks everyone!