JavaScript's Journey to the Edge | JSConf EU 2019

In September of 2008, Google’s Chromium Project released V8, a
JavaScript engine, as part of a browser optimization wave that
heralded the era of JavaScript browser applications that we both
love, and love to hate. Less than a year later, in 2009, Ryan Dahl
announced (at this very conference!) a way to run the V8 browser
environment outside of the browser- Node.js, a platform that held
the promise of unifying web application development, where both
client and server side development could happen in the same
language - JavaScript. A decade later, V8, JavaScript, and its new
buddy WebAssembly, have expanded to lands charted only a few years
after Node.js debuted- known (confusingly) as the “Edge”. In this
talk, we’ll introduce what the “Edge” is and why we are excited for
it to revolutionize computation on the web. We’ll explore how this
adventurous JavaScript engine, V8, is so well suited to tasks
previously limited to Virtual Machines, Containers, or even simply
Operating Systems. Finally, we’ll talk about security, Spectre, and
ask ourselves the age old question, “You can do it, but should
you?”.