Getting started with WebAssembly & Emscripten (Udemy.com)
A complete guide for learning the WebAssembly JavaScript API and Emscripten toolset.
Created by: Ray Viljoen
Last updated November 2020
What you will learn
- Understand what WebAssembly is and how it will impact Web Development
- Learn to load and run WebAssembly modules, using native JavaScript browser APIs
- Compile C and C++ code using Emscripten
- Advanced Emscripten features such as calling JS from WA and vice-versa
How it compares
Against the other 239 rated Udemy courses in JavaScript on CourseDuck:
- Rating4.5 out of 5higher than 53% of them
- Reviews909#86 of 240 by number of reviews
- Length2.5 hoursshorter than 76% of them
- Last updatedNovember 2020earlier than 67% of them
Course Description
*** UPDATED FOR EMSCRIPTEN v2.0 ***
Learn to create and use WebAssembly Modules from scratch using Emscripten.
Bring your skills up to date with the very latest technology in Web Development.
This course is suitable for both beginners and experienced developers looking to get started with WebAssembly.
Understand what WebAssembly is and how it speeds up the web
Use native JavaScript APIs to load and run WebAssembly modules
Learn to use Emscripten and compile your own C or C++ code as a WebAssembly module
Use WebAssembly in a real-world project and micro benchmark
An invaluable skill for any developer looking to future-proof their skills
WebAssembly is the most promising new technology for the web, allowing browsers, and other JavaScript environments, to run blazing-fast raw binary modules, compiled directly from C, C++ and many other languages.
Understanding WebAssembly is an invaluable skill for anyone working with JavaScript or compiled languages, allowing you to bridge the gap between native software development and web-based JavaScript.
This course will provide a very practical and concise approach to learning WebAssembly & Emscripten, and will give you a solid base to immediately start creating and implementing fast, optimised WebAssembly modules.
Content and Overview
This course aims to teach a solid foundational understanding of what WebAssembly is, and why it's so powerful.
Section one starts with an overview of WebAssembly and a detailed setup lesson to help you follow along every step of the way.
Section two covers the native JavaScript browser API for loading and running WebAssembly modules. This section also includes importing and exporting functions to and from a WebAssembly module, and shows how to access WebAssembly memory.
The third and most substantial part of the course, covers Emscripten in-depth. Teaching everything from installing Emscripten on either Mac, Windows or Linux, compiling C code from scratch and the general Module runtime cycle.
This Emscripten section also teaches some more advanced features of Emscripten, including calling JavaScript from a WebAssembly module and vice-versa.
The final section of the course is a practical 4-part lesson, teaching how to implement a fully animated HTML5 Canvas project using WebAssembly as the main processor.
Upon completion of this course you will have the practical skills to immediately start creating high performance WebAssembly modules.
This course is to the point and everything is demonstrated in the most simple, yet practical ways.
Instructor Details
- 4.5 Rating
909 Reviews
Ray Viljoen
Stackacademy provides high-quality Courses for Developers, with learning-efficiency as the number one priority.
My name is Ray Viljoen,
I have over 10 years experience as a Full Stack Developer and have real world experience building, maintaining & optimising a wide range of applications.
My courses are concise, teaches practical skills and is designed to also serve as usable future reference material.
More courses by Ray Viljoen
Master Electron: Desktop Apps with HTML, JavaScript & CSS (2021)
4.5 (4,330 Reviews)
Provider: Udemy
Time: 8h
$84.99
More JavaScript courses
The Modern Javascript Bootcamp Course (2026)
4.9 (13,238 Reviews)
Provider: Udemy
Time: 51.9h
$24.99
JavaScript: Understanding Advanced ES Next (ES6 and Beyond) (2025)
4.9 (1,076 Reviews)
Provider: Udemy
Time: 3.5h
$79.99
Reviews
By Evaldas Naujanis on 11/9/2024
Nice course. Great intro to WASM. Well for me at least. However it's first part is outdated. And probably that's a blocker for a lot of new people, who are just starting to know WASM. And it is sad, because I think those 3rd part wasm compilation tools aren't really needed. Course should be reorganised. Just give the wasm files in resources, and update flow accordingly, remove dependency from those 3rd party tools. Some wasm files can be found in later lessons resources. So there is a workaround to this problem if you don't follow it step by step... But people pay money for this - it is unfair to sell them a broken thing.
By Bar Smith on 12/27/2020
Very clear lessons, awesome instructions that don't leave you stuck.
By Marc Hage on 11/22/2020
very nice: special topic/niche topic*, short & sweet/moves on quickly, provides sources, doesn't provide assignments (if you are looking for that).
* imo
By Dav Thorn on 11/21/2020
Good course . Learned a lot about this technology.
By Keith Rosenberg on 10/21/2020
The instructor is both very knowledgeable and gifted at communicating ideas. The lectures are also very poignant and purposeful, and do not ever leave you wondering, "Why are we talking about this?" Hands down, this is the one of the best out of many courses I have taken on Udemy.
By Makotohonda on 10/8/2020
Great introductory course especially for JS beginners who are interested in WA.
By Neeraj N on 9/27/2020
The course is structured perfectly to learn about WebAssembly and Emscripten. I enjoyed the course and look forward to applying it in my projects.
By Rico S. Crisostomo on 8/5/2020
The cwrap does not work using the given emcc compilation method, perhaps this is due to differences in Emscripted version. I managed to make this work using the following command after few research:
emcc lib/demo.c -s WASM=1 -s EXTRA_EXPORTED_RUNTIME_METHODS=["cwrap"] -s EXPORTED_
FUNCTIONS="['_main','_getNum','_getDoubleNum','_greet']" -O2 -o public/demo.js
By Martin Giroux on 7/20/2020
Excellent course, well explained. Thank you so much.
By Jaak Kivinukk on 7/10/2020
I have had the idea in my head to learn WebAssembly for some time already and if you're somebody, who thinks the same, then hands down, take that course and you're not disappointed!
By Gary Hellman on 7/5/2020
really enjoying this course; nice lively pace and very interesting!
By Alan Jefferson on 7/2/2020
It's great, especially how it covered the vanilla-approach to WASM before getting into Emscripten. I bet that helped many get over that hurdle, before attempting to actually install it and get discouraged by failing at that. I do wish it did the same for the NodeJS server however. I wish it could have started without a server, or at most the python -m http.server to avoid the NodeJS and yarn involvement which was a hurdle for me as both as unfamiliar territory.
Quality Score
No CourseDuck member has rated this course yet. Taken it? Give each part a thumbs up or down.
Overall Score : 90 / 100






