The author is missing another huge area: plugins/modding/scripting/etc. Think IDE plugins, Minecraft mods, or running user-provided untrusted scripts.

The benefits WASM brings are:

1. Sandboxing - security 2. Isolation - if a plugin crashes, it won't bring down the whole program 3. Interoperability - write a plugin in lots of different languages, not just lua or js 4. Speed

I'm hoping to write my thesis for my master's degree on this topic this year. I'm also in the process of writing a game like screeps, where users provide a WASM script to control units for an RTS-style game (without combat though) https://github.com/JMS55/botnet.

It's amazing how simple it is to constrain memory usage, runtime duration, and secure exported functions to a WASM VM. Performance is also great - currently about ~6 microseconds per tick per unit, up to ~200 microseconds when doing expensive pathfinding. All that, while letting you program your units in Rust - the same language as the server is written in, while being able to share code with the server, and not having to use something more script-y like lua.

Curious if people have seen any other routes to doing it via WASM.