On Sep 13, 2011, at 3:49 PM, Bill Frantz wrote: > I am always amused by the continuing demands for more performance. The only > real advantage of performance as a major metric is that it is relatively easy > to measure. > > If performance is your number one goal, then the only languages you should > consider are assembler and machine language. :-) > > On the other hand, if you like safety, security, maintainability, > understandability etc., then recognize that these features have associated > costs.
I agree, of course. Still, it's surprising that JS, which is quite fast, is still considered the performance bottleneck. Profiles I see, ignoring JS-heavy benchmarks that don't match much real-world code, show we have work cut out elsewhere: DOM, layout, rendering... Sure, putting game logic and physics engine in JS will hurt. Indeed we should be using the short-vector units and massively parallel GPUs (safely) from JS. More on this very soon. > On 9/13/11 at 7:48, [email protected] (Brendan Eich) wrote: > >> On Sep 13, 2011, at 5:33 AM, Andreas Rossberg wrote: >> >>> * A big problem is predictability, it is a black art to get the best >>> performance out of contemporary JS VMs. >> >> This is the big one in my book. Optimization faults happen. But can we >> iterate till flat? > > A set of rules a developer interested in performance can use would be > helpful. Particularly if they applied to more than one implementation. :-) That will require iteration too, just to get VMs into alignment (assuming their maintainers are willing to do the work, which may mean converging on optimization hierarchy). >>> * The massive complexity that comes with implementing all this affects >>> stability. >> >> This one I'm less sympathetic to, since we won't get rid of untyped JS up >> front. A sunk cost fallacy? If we could make a "clean break" (ahem), sure. >> Otherwise this cost must be paid. > > We could get better stability with simpler, less performant VMs. Some users > might prefer the increased stability and security such a VM would offer. Not in the large in today's browser market. A niche market, perhaps. Very niche. /be _______________________________________________ es-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss
