Writing code for multiple platforms can be a lot of work. It can be even more work to have to completely rewrite it for each one, too. What if you wrote an application in C++, but wanted it to be displayed in the browser somehow? Well now, with a tool called Emscripten, that’s possible.

Emscripten is an LLVM based project that compiles C and C++ into highly performant JavaScript in the asm.js format. In short: near native speeds, using C and C++, inside of the browser.  Even better, emscripten converts OpenGL, a desktop graphics API, into WebGL, which is the web variant of that API, thereby allowing for high performance graphics within the browser.

You can find deeper tutorials on this topic at my blog, DaveVoyles.com

Topics Discussed

• [00:50] What is LLVM?
• [03:30] Why Now?
• [05:50] Ex: Gaming on the Web
• [05:45] asm.js Overview
• [06:55] Limitations
• [09:02] Why Do This?
• [12:43] Browser Support
• [13:15] Communicating between JS & C/C++
• [13:55] Benchmarks
• [16:37] Case Study: Owlchemy Labs
• [17:50] Driving the Point Home

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@DaveVoyles

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