I learned how to compile to WebAssembly by getting nice and intimate with the WebAssembly spec, learning the ins and outs, then writing a basic emitter for the

I learned how to compile to WebAssembly by getting nice and intimate with the WebAssembly spec, learning the ins and outs, then writing a basic emitter for the bytecode, then writing a code generator for basic operations like arithmetic, then extending it to locals, then first class functions, etc. So kind of backwards. I did start with a parser and typechecker, but if anything that made it too difficult. I had all of these extremely high level concepts that I struggled to map to WebAssembly (pattern matching, closures, etc.) and discouraged me in the process. If I had started with WebAssembly and moved to my high level language, I'd probably have restricted myself to a much more practical set of language features. On the flip side, my language would probably be influenced by how easy it is to code generate to WASM, which isn't necessarily what I want.