Top all-time · #3327
Benedikt Meurer
Personal blog · benediktmeurer.deprogramming
Benedikt Meurer's personal blog at benediktmeurer.de covers programming. Since 2016, 23 different Hacker News readers have linked it 32 times, most often “Traditional JavaScript benchmarks”. The last post was in 2018, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (10) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Benedikt Meurer's blog for posts on V8 and JavaScript engine internals, including TurboFan, Ignition, and performance benchmarks. Commenters cite it as background on engine optimization.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 10 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Personal website of Benedikt Meurer, JavaScript Engine Hacker and Programming Language Enthusiast.
Most-linked posts?
- Traditional JavaScript benchmarks7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2016-12-16
- V8: A Tale of TurboFan4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2017-03-01
- Optimizing bound functions further in V82 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-01-14
- Ignition and TurboFan Launch and Declarative JS2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-04-03
What Hacker News says?
Actually, the AOT optimization path for asm.js has been supported by Internet Explorer/Edge for quite some time. Chrome also supports AOT asm.js path now through their wasm implementation[1]. Before that Chrome and Safari did optimizations that just happened to make asm.js faster ;) It's likely that if WebAssembly didn't happen everyone would've implemented AOT optimizations for asm.js and all the new features (shar…
Comment linking /2016/12/20/v8-behind-the-scenes-december-edition/
on “Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly”Submitted V8: A Tale of TurboFan as a story · 206 points
HN discussionWell, the optimizing pipeline has completely changed in V8 5.8 (if you use `--turbo --ignition`) and in 5.9+. It's been simplified and most importantly, does not deoptimize on quite so many common features (such as try/catch). More information at http://benediktmeurer.de/2017/03/01/v8-behind-the-scenes-feb... and some of his other articles. In my testing it appears that TurboFan cannot optimize certain patterns as w…
Comment linking /2017/03/01/v8-behind-the-scenes-february-edition/
on “Node v8.0.0 Released”Submitted V8: Behind the Scenes (December Edition) as a story · 101 points
HN discussionTake a look at this talk on why mobile devices are so much slower than desktop devices ( they are indeed 10x slower in the traces I have looked at too) - https://youtu.be/4bZvq3nodf4 Also look at the speedometer benchmark ( http://browserbench.org/Speedometer/ ) for a more realistic comparison of how slow your mobile device is compared to your desktop when running real world apps. Here are some numbers from the benc…
Comment linking /2016/12/16/the-truth-about-traditional-javascript-benchmarks/
on “Things I learnt making a fast website”Submitted Restoring for..in peak performance as a story · 89 points
HN discussionWoohoo! I've been hoping that this guy's Function.bind optimizations land before 6.0: http://benediktmeurer.de/2015/12/25/a-new-approach-to-functi... But you prompted me to check on the status of his work, and was happy to find a new post: http://benediktmeurer.de/2016/01/14/optimizing-bound-functio... It looks like V8 will finally be able to inline bound functions ( https://codereview.chromium.org/1581343002 )! Tha…
Comment linking /2016/01/14/optimizing-bound-functions-further/
on “ES6 Cheatsheet”Submitted Traditional JavaScript benchmarks as a story · 85 points
HN discussionI highly recommend this article in that same vein http://benediktmeurer.de/2016/12/16/the-truth-about-traditio... This is when Chrome on Android finally started to turn a corner, they've done a fantastic job. JS perf has increased 50% from 2016 to 2018 in Chrome/Android. Sadly Android is still hamstrung by extremely mediocre Qualcomm SoCs but they've made huge strides on the software side.
Comment linking /2016/12/16/the-truth-about-traditional-javascript-benchmarks/
on “Why iPhone Xs performance on JavaScript is so good”Submitted Ignition and TurboFan Launch and Declarative JS as a story · 4 points
HN discussionhttps://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/06/24/apple_accused_of_ch... http://benediktmeurer.de/2016/12/16/the-truth-about-traditio...
Comment linking /2016/12/16/the-truth-about-traditional-javascript-benchmarks/
on “Huawei caught cheating performance test for new phones”Submitted The Truth about JavaScript Benchmarks as a story · 4 points
HN discussionFYI: Idiomatic Javascript / Builtins should be fast with the recent revamp of the V8 engine (stop writing "CrankScript"). http://benediktmeurer.de/2017/03/01/v8-behind-the-scenes-feb... https://github.com/v8/v8/wiki/TurboFan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1FBosB5tjM
Comment linking /2017/03/01/v8-behind-the-scenes-february-edition/
on “Optimize your Node app by upgrading Node.js”Submitted The case of temporary objects in Chrome as a story · 4 points
HN discussionWe find that http://browserbench.org/Speedometer/ -- which is what v8 is optimizing against now -- is extremely close to real world Discourse (EmberJS, Glimmer) performance. We always wondered why Android was so crazy ridiculously slow at our real world JS vs. iOS starting in late 2013 onward.. getting worse and worse over 2014 and 2015.. and "gee, we optimized for the wrong thing aka Octane" was a big part of that.…
Comment linking /2016/12/16/the-truth-about-traditional-javascript-benchmarks/
on “Octane benchmark retired”Submitted The truth about traditional JavaScript benchmarks as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSpeaking from the perspective of a (former) V8 engineer, SunSpider is crappy benchmark, and I can't believe people still track it. It has misdirected JavaScript performance engineering work for going on 15 years now, leading to all kinds of weird contortions in JavaScript engines that do not benefit real world sites. Years ago, V8 switched away from microbenchmarks for the most part. See: https://benediktmeurer.de/2…
Comment linking /2016/12/16/the-truth-about-traditional-javascript-benchmarks/
on “Firefox finally outperforming Google Chrome in SunSpider”Submitted Impact of polymorphism on component-based frameworks like React as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIt can sometimes be difficult to predict what will cause performance regressions when developing an application or web server with test data. So you do your best with what you know at the time of release, and then deal with performance issues when you know what is causing regressions (e.g. saved searches) and can then make measurements and profiling to see what exactly is causing the issue. Likewise, improving perfo…
Comment linking /2016/11/25/v8-behind-the-scenes-november-edition/
on “AI is removing the middle class of software engineering”Submitted The case of temporary objects in Chrome as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Investigating the performance of Object.toString in ES2015 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Object constructor calls in webpack bundles as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted JavaScript Optimization Patterns (Part 1) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Following up on JavaScript benchmarks as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted V8: Behind the Scenes (November Edition) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Optimizing bound functions further in V8 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The truth about traditional JavaScript benchmarks as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The truth about traditional JavaScript benchmarks (2016) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted V8: Behind the Scenes (March Edition: I+TF Launch and Declarative JavaScript) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted V8: Behind the Scenes (February Edition Feat. A Tale of TurboFan) as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
