> By using Rust for both our frontend and backend, we have a unified stack of Rust everywhere, simplifying our hiring.
> I can write web apps in another language than JavaScript
> I can write web apps that are fast
Yeah, this is what's worrying me. If you look at rerun.io website, you will notice that it's built with Next.js, i.e. is using a React framework to build pages that have no interactivity whatsoever. Next.js is used for the blog, despite it being just a collection of simple static html pages. Meanwhile, the user has to download around 200kB of javascript for no reason whatsoever; and the only reward that they get for their trouble is an avalanche of javascript errors in the browser console [0].
Is the Rust/wasm future going to look like that?
Hi, author here!
We are building the frontend of our _application_ in Rust and rendering it to a canvas using egui.rs. For the web site we are using more "traditional" tech, as you've noticed.
I am not a big fan of the complexity of modern web sites (including our own), which is exactly why I created egui. However, it is targeted at web apps, not web sites.
I'm very curious how well this is working for you in practice, since I've been thinking about what it would look like to share a single Rust UI implementation across a webapp and native apps.
Putting the UI in a canvas elements have some distinct drawbacks (https://github.com/emilk/egui/tree/master/crates/eframe#prob...) but for us it is definitely worth it. Having one unified codebase for our web app and native app, and having it all in Rust, is just amazing.
We're currently working on a 3D renderer based on wgpu (https://github.com/gfx-rs/wgpu) that we will likewise use for both web and desktop.