The Web Should Become a VM
The article discusses the evolution of the web and proposes that it should transition into a universal virtual machine (VM) with WebAssembly as its core. It argues that modern browsers are becoming more like operating systems, handling complex applications rather than just documents. The author envisions a future where the web is language-neutral and applications compile directly into a Web VM, moving away from traditional HTML, CSS, and JavaScript frameworks.
- ▪Modern browsers are increasingly complex and function more like operating systems.
- ▪The author suggests that WebAssembly should become the core of the web, allowing for compiled applications instead of interpreted scripts.
- ▪There is a call for a shift from legacy web technologies to a more streamlined architecture that prioritizes a universal VM.
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Record
| Original publisher | DEV.to (Top) |
| Canonical URL | https://dev.to/ivan_jrmc/the-web-should-become-a-vm-10k8 |
| Publication time | Sun, 24 May 2026 14:57:00 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-24T15:07:33.299Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-24T15:07:33.299Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | None |
| Cluster logic | Not yet clustered, or no peer story found in the clustering window. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
try { if(localStorage) { let currentUser = localStorage.getItem('current_user'); if (currentUser) { currentUser = JSON.parse(currentUser); if (currentUser.id === 120761) { document.getElementById('article-show-container').classList.add('current-user-is-article-author'); } } } } catch (e) { console.error(e); } Ivan Jeremic Posted on May 24 The Web Should Become a VM #webassembly #webdev #architecture #future I increasingly feel that browsers are carrying too much historical baggage. Today every browser ships gigantic subsystems: a JavaScript engine an HTML parser a CSS engine a DOM engine a rendering engine layout systems style systems compatibility layers for decades of legacy behavior Modern browser engines are among the most complicated software projects humanity has ever built.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at DEV.to (Top).
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