Uploaded February 2026 | Updated September 2026, 9 hours ago
In this episode of WebAssembly Unleashed, hosts Joel Moses, Oscar Spencer, and Matt Yacobucci are joined by DevCentral Community Evangelist, Jason Rahm, to discuss programmability in the data plane. Through Jason's insights and use cases as both a former F5 customer and a current DevCentral maintainer they dig into the lessons learned from F5's iRules that Wasm should take note of.
Tune in to understand the programmability pain points for non-developers, the benefits of the community feedback loop, what Wasm can do to be usable for non-devs, and why Wasm portability reduces tool sprawl across platforms.
Chapters:
00:00 Welcome to WebAssembly Unleashed
01:03 F5 iRules explained: Programmable data plane access (L3–L7 control)
03:27 What customers do with iRules: Routing, headers, security hacks
04:42 Real customer impact: DoD DNS fix “on the wire”
06:37 Non-dev programmability pain: Debugging and guardrails
10:37 From iRules to features/products: Patterns become checkboxes
12:22 DevCentral: The community feedback loop that shaped F5
18:26 Future of programmability: Making WebAssembly usable for non-devs
25:02 How do you get a non-dev community engaged and active in programmability?
27:57 Why Wasm portability could reduce tool sprawl across platforms
Learn more about F5's iRules: clouddocs.f5.com/api/irules
For more from F5's Office of the CTO visit the following sites:
Blogs - f5.com/company/octo
Reports - f5.com/services/resources/reports
Meet Your Hosts:
Joel Moses | linkedin.com/in/joelmoses | community.f5.com/users/joel_moses/398372
Oscar Spencer | twitter.com/oscar_spen | linkedin.com/in/oscarspen
Matthew Yacobucci | linkedin.com/in/matthew-yacobucci-323b4b2
⬇️⬇️⬇️ JOIN THE COMMUNITY! ⬇️⬇️⬇️
DevCentral is an online community of technical peers dedicated to learning, exchanging ideas, and solving problems - together.
Find all our platform links ⬇️ and follow our Community Evangelists! 👋
➡️ DEVCENTRAL: community.f5.com
➡️ YOUTUBE: youtube.com/devcentral
➡️ LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/showcase/f5-devcentral
➡️ TWITTER: twitter.com/devcentral
Your Community Evangelists:
👋 Jason Rahm: linkedin.com/in/jrahm | twitter.com/jasonrahm
👋 Buu Lam: linkedin.com/in/buulam | twitter.com/buulam
👋 Aubrey King: linkedin.com/in/aubreyking | twitter.com/aubreykingf5
👋 Chase Abbott: linkedin.com/in/chaseabbott1
In this episode of WebAssembly Unleashed, hosts Joel Moses, Oscar Spencer, and Matt Yacobucci are joined by DevCentral Community Evangelist, Jason Rahm, to discuss programmability in the data plane. Through Jason's insights and use cases as both a former F5 customer and a current DevCentral maintainer they dig into the lessons learned from F5's iRules that Wasm should take note of.
Tune in to understand the programmability pain points for non-developers, the benefits of the community feedback loop, what Wasm can do to be usable for non-devs, and why Wasm portability reduces tool sprawl across platforms.
Chapters:
00:00 Welcome to WebAssembly Unleashed
01:03 F5 iRules explained: Programmable data plane access (L3–L7 control)
03:27 What customers do with iRules: Routing, headers, security hacks
04:42 Real customer impact: DoD DNS fix “on the wire”
06:37 Non-dev programmability pain: Debugging and guardrails
10:37 From iRules to features/products: Patterns become checkboxes
12:22 DevCentral: The community feedback loop that shaped F5
18:26 Future of programmability: Making WebAssembly usable for non-devs
25:02 How do you get a non-dev community engaged and active in programmability?
27:57 Why Wasm portability could reduce tool sprawl across platforms
Learn more about F5's iRules: clouddocs.f5.com/api/irules
For more from F5's Office of the CTO visit the following sites:
Blogs - f5.com/company/octo
Reports - f5.com/services/resources/reports
Meet Your Hosts:
Joel Moses | linkedin.com/in/joelmoses | community.f5.com/users/joel_moses/398372
Oscar Spencer | twitter.com/oscar_spen | linkedin.com/in/oscarspen
Matthew Yacobucci | linkedin.com/in/matthew-yacobucci-323b4b2
⬇️⬇️⬇️ JOIN THE COMMUNITY! ⬇️⬇️⬇️
DevCentral is an online community of technical peers dedicated to learning, exchanging ideas, and solving problems - together.
Find all our platform links ⬇️ and follow our Community Evangelists! 👋
➡️ DEVCENTRAL: community.f5.com
➡️ YOUTUBE: youtube.com/devcentral
➡️ LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/showcase/f5-devcentral
➡️ TWITTER: twitter.com/devcentral
Your Community Evangelists:
👋 Jason Rahm: linkedin.com/in/jrahm | twitter.com/jasonrahm
👋 Buu Lam: linkedin.com/in/buulam | twitter.com/buulam
👋 Aubrey King: linkedin.com/in/aubreyking | twitter.com/aubreykingf5
👋 Chase Abbott: linkedin.com/in/chaseabbott1
