QJS: Modern JavaScript in Go with WebAssembly

QJS: A Game Changer for Go?

The article introduces QJS, a compelling solution for running modern JavaScript (ES2023) within Go applications using WebAssembly and the QuickJS engine. The key innovation lies in avoiding CGO dependencies, offering a sandboxed and memory-safe environment. This is a significant advantage for Go developers seeking to embed JavaScript functionality, such as plugin systems, user-provided scripting, or business logic, without the complexities of C toolchains. The performance benchmarks presented, especially against Goja and ModerncQuickJS, demonstrate QJS's competitiveness, providing lower memory usage and execution times. This is particularly appealing for performance-critical applications. However, the article could benefit from a deeper dive into the complexities of Go-JavaScript interoperability, potential performance trade-offs, and the debugging experience. Furthermore, while the sandboxed environment is a plus, a more detailed discussion of the security implications and potential vulnerabilities of integrating external JavaScript code would be beneficial.

The use of WebAssembly for the QuickJS engine is a smart move, providing portability and security. The examples of exposing Go functions to JavaScript and vice-versa, along with support for async/await, showcase the seamless integration. The introduction of the Proxy type to handle large Go objects efficiently is a clever optimization. However, the article lacks information on the practical limits of this approach, such as the size of data that can be efficiently passed between Go and JavaScript. The provided benchmarks, while informative, are limited to specific scenarios. A broader set of benchmarks, testing different JavaScript features and workloads, would provide a more comprehensive picture of QJS's performance characteristics. Finally, the article should have mentioned the potential overhead of WebAssembly, and how it compares to other solutions. This is crucial for developers to make informed decisions for their projects.

Key Points

• QJS enables running modern ES2023 JavaScript inside Go applications using WebAssembly.

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📖 Source: Running Modern ES2023 JavaScript Inside Go Using QJS and WebAssembly