Can You Run Python and Go Directly in Your Browser? Exploring PyScript and Goscript

PyScript, recently released by the Anaconda team, is a framework that allows developers to embed Python code directly in HTML, often dubbed the “Python version of JSP”.

Under the hood, PyScript uses WebAssembly via Pyodide, which compiles the CPython 3.8 interpreter to WebAssembly, enabling Python to run in web browsers.

Similarly, developers have created Goscript, a Go playground that runs Go code in the browser. The site https://goscript.dev demonstrates this, using WebAssembly to execute Go.

Goscript implements most Go language features (pre‑1.18, without generics) and includes several components: parser – converts source code into an AST, ported from the official Go code. type checker – performs type inference and checking based on the AST, also ported. codegen – generates bytecode from the AST and type information. vm – executes the generated bytecode. std – standard library, ported from Go’s official libraries. engine – native part of the standard library with simple wrappers.

Goscript’s test suite, covering most Go features, can be found at https://github.com/oxfeeefeee/goscript/tree/master/engine/tests , and the full project source is available at https://github.com/oxfeeefeee/goscript .