WASM runtimes miss out on a _lot_ of optimizations that a battle-tested C compiler will perform, and sometimes requires machine emulation (e.g. Go compiled to WASM results in a virtual machine/emulation layer to run Go code.)

It can work, but it's not the fastest thing in the world.

I think languages that make working with C/C++ code much more seamless, e.g. as nice as working with Go code can be, is a better approach. Zig does this well and feels quite natural coming from Go. It can also be used to make CGO cross compilation 'just work' and alleviate many of those pains.