You loved running JavaScript in your web browser. Now, get ready for Python scripting

In brief: 

 A new project has been announced which will enable the Python programming language to run within web browsers with the help of WebAssembly. The CPython on WASM project, which will build the default and most popular implementation of the Python language written in C, is being developed by Berkeley-based software developer Ethan Smith. According to this article in The Register, the project was created with the help of core Python developer Christian Heimes, and could make Python a viable alternative to JavaScript, at least for some web applications. WebAssembly has become hugely popular thanks to its promise of bringing the performance of native applications to the web, to a level that isn’t possible with JavaScript. Currently, the goal of the project – to bring Python to the browser through WebAssembly’s Emscripten compiler – focuses on enabling the use case, rather than performance.

Why this is important:

 The project marks a step closer to Heimes’ goal of making the web a supported platform for CPython, just like Windows or macOS. The announcement follows another project which debuted in April, called Pyodide, which also enables Python code to run in a browser.