WebAssembly: The future that wasn’t

WebAssembly (WASM) is praised for its potential as a secure, high-performance server runtime, particularly for microservices and Functions-as-a-Service, due to its sandboxing capabilities and ability to run alongside JavaScript with near-native performance. Despite its promise, the adoption of the Web Assembly System Interface (WASI) has been slow, hindering WASM's practical application as a server-side solution. The main challenges include inconsistent support for system I/O across different compilers, complex memory management requirements, and the fragmented runtime ecosystem, which make it difficult to achieve the "compile once, run anywhere" ideal. These obstacles have prevented WASM from becoming a viable alternative to more established technologies like containers, despite its potential advantages in security and performance.