On Nov 2, 2011, at 9:51 AM, Mikeal Rogers wrote:
> On Nov 2, 2011, at November 2, 20119:30 AM, Quildreen Motta wrote:
>>
>>> "freeze" does not add anything new to an object. If you don't want to
>>> change the shape of an object ... don't change the shape of the object.
>> Again, immutability isn't just about security, but optimisation as well. You
>> could also look at shared-memory threads, because I think they make a hell
>> of an argument for "frozen" objects or immutability.
>
> The last time we looked at freezing a few core objects in node.js we found
> that v8 was actually slower with them frozen and backed them out, which is
> probably a good thing.
>
> I'm very skeptical of the "new language feature for optimization" argument
> ever since the static typing debate in ES4 and the tracer work Mozilla did
> shortly after.
Type inference is doing well for us now. I agree in general.
However, there's a reason Dart did what it did. With JS, you have to guard, or
provide an invalidation protocol, in case someone shadows an inherited property:
var a = [],
b = {m: function (i) { return i * i; }},
c = Object.create(b),
d = Object.create(c);
for (var i = 0; i < BIG; i++) {
a[i] = d.m(i);
if (rarely(i)) {
c.m = function (i) { return 42 * i; };
}
}
This is a contrived case, but in general, because JS objects are mutable, and
when they're used as prototypes they stand in for class vtables, something has
to pay a price. Either you worry about checking on every d.m(i) call that the
cached target method in b is still the one to call, or you emit code that
doesn't check but tear it up and throw it away when c.m is injected and shadows
b.m.
This is fine with me and worth the price, but it clearly is not for everyone.
I'm not just talking about implementors, either. Some users will want to know
d.m isn't going to change. They may not want to know that it's b.m, mind you --
they simply won't want that c.m assignment to be legal, or else if they do
support such a thing, they don't want it to affect d's "vtable".
Ok, so such people should use another language than JS. Or, perhaps, they could
freeze c and b. Then they'd have parity, once V8 and other engines got around
to optimizing accordingly. (It's bogus for you to infer too much from the state
of optimization vs. new features.)
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