Yes!

Part of the cross-platform story here is an Emscripten port of webgpu.h,

https://github.com/emscripten-core/emscripten/pull/10218

So you can write an application and run it either natively (using Dawn or wgpu-native) or on the Web (as WebAssembly + JavaScript).

Genuine question from someone looking at toying with graphics programming who had never heard of WebGPU before today: does this mean I should hold off on learning WebGL? How different are the two?

If you don't have any kind of experience, you are better off starting with WebGL.

It is more beginner friendly and it is here now.

You can either start from scratch:

https://webglfundamentals.org/

Or use one of the two most developer friendly frameworks.

https://threejs.org/

https://www.babylonjs.com/

If you have zero experience in graphics, another approach is to learn about 3D software rendering in first place.

https://www.davrous.com/2013/06/13/tutorial-series-learning-...

Leave WebGPU for when you feel comfortable with 3D programming.

Thanks! I'd actually been looking for that software rendering article for a while as well and couldn't find it.