This is why Rust is going to eventually eat Javascript's lunch on the browser. I'm willing to longbets that by 2025 we see a Rust framework as the top browser toolkit. I'd even be willing to bet that there are popular frameworks in use by major websites that discard the DOM altogether for something simpler and faster.

There's a reason why this has to happen, too.

My sincere hope is that Mozilla and the Rust/Browser luminaries will develop cross-platform APIs for full device hardware abstraction. If we can get Rust/WASM to be able to access the same system calls, hardware resources, payment APIs, native windowing routines, etc. as the iOS and Android SDKs, then we can potentially build a cross-platform native web that is just as snappy as the two shitty walled gardens we have today.

I really hope the performant web slays the app store. That's the dumbest trap we ever fell for. I'd love to visit a website and be playing native Minecraft in seconds. Sans Google Play or the App Store, with no bullshit monopoly tax.

That would address one of the major problems in our industry.

What do you mean by “browser toolkit”? If you mean “thing that people make web apps with” (like React or like you might imagine Qt being, though it’s not for the web platform), there is not a chance that this will happen by 2025. Zero.

For starters, Rust: Rust is just too complex to be the most popular language when something like JavaScript exists which is faster and easier to get started with, and generally good enough. It has niche usage and will steadily grow, but it’s not going to take over the space any time soon, and probably never will. I say this as a Rust developer for seven years and a web developer for more than fifteen years.

Then the other part, discarding the DOM altogether: there are way too many pieces of functionality that the browser provides that currently cannot be implemented in web user space, for this to become mainstream any time soon. For example: correct scrolling, standard keyboard and mouse event handling, and accessibility. The idea that you would go from quite a few pieces of major functionality completely non-existent in browsers and specs (most of these issues aren’t even being talked about) to mastery of the space within five years is unreasonable.

For further shared abstractions, many web APIs are developed and continue to be developed. Other experiments like WASI exist. WebAssembly has scope to be a solid foundation for this sort of thing. But applying all of the interesting web APIs to desktop and mobile platforms, that’s not really something that Mozilla, Rust or browser developers can or should do anything about. They have somewhere between no and extremely limited clout in such spaces.

I agree that it won't reach the popularity levels of JS due to the learning curve, but on technical side of things future is _now_.