This document discusses JavaScript engines and WebAssembly. It describes several popular JavaScript engines like SpiderMonkey, V8, and Chakra. It explains how SpiderMonkey evolved through different optimizations like TraceMonkey and IonMonkey. It also discusses emscripten which compiles C/C++ to JavaScript, and asm.js which aimed for native performance from browser apps. Finally, it introduces WebAssembly as a binary format that can be decoded much faster than JavaScript and avoids constraints of asm.js while maintaining the same functionality and security permissions.