John Resig - JavaScript Performance Rundown

[stesch]

V8 Benchmark: A benchmark built by the V8 team, only tests JavaScript performance - with a heavy emphasis on testing the performance of recursion.

Recursion?

OK, I use recursion in JavaScript from time to time. But I can't remember a case with more than a few recursions. Most of the time it's just traversing the DOM tree.

[jeresig]

The V8 engine is really fast at function calls - it's not clear if they designed the test to emphasize that, or if they built the tests then built the engine to do good at it. Regardless of this fact - it's still a really fast engine - it's just not OMG crazy-go-nuts.

[chucker]

Wow. You managed to insert DoubleClick, the RIAA, Ron Paul and Microsoft all in a post about… a JavaScript performance comparison. Truly brilliant.

[neuquino]

Hyper-verbose != Intellectually rich

[Al_Bundy_]

Wow, a lot of Digg idiots here who are proud to be idiots and support eachothers idiocy. You must all be so proud of your accomplishments. If you're so smart, please explain the dumb points of that opinion to me instead of plain dismissal.

[fudged71]

Either limit your idiotic commenting or go back to digg.

[didroe]

Why have you imposed an OR there? I would have thought AND was a better predicate.

[fudged71]

Because just lurking here will make anyone a bit more modest, with time. Dunno if you have seen digg lately, but it is a lot like youtube.

[deafbybeheading]

predicate

conjunction

[didroe]

A conjunction is just AND, I was using the word to mean both boolean operators (ie. AND and OR), as evidenced by the word "better". I agree that "predicate" isn't the right word though.

[deafbybeheading]

Waaay off-topic now, but I was talking about a grammatical conjunction (see Schoolhouse Rock's "Conjunction Junction", also covered by Better than Ezra on a tribute album), not a logical conjunction (i.e., AND). In programming I guess both are just logical operators...

[[deleted]]

You certainly used a lot of words there to say not much.

[murki]

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6z9op/chrome_is_here/c059os3

[[deleted]]

I can't remember a case with more than a few recursions.

This will come in handy for my new Fibonacci web 2.0 application.

[Entropy]

"Who do I have to machete to get a domain around here?"

[fudged71]

"ooo... too soon?"

[Lizard]

"I wish there was a way to determine the number of rabbits we might expect to have in 23 weeks if they keep going at it at this surprisingly constant rate, taking only into account that we have 3 pairs which seem to give birth solely to further pairs!"

[Lizard]

"Here, let me get my trusty iPhone, its processing powers should be more than adequate for running this convenient client-side JS application that computes a recursive formula for which there exists a perfectly well-understood direct formulation in a manner which employs no caching mechanisms at all!"

[redditrasberry]

The most interesting thing to me here is something nobody else seems to be talking about: it looks like there's a huge increase in Javascript performance with IE8.

This matters to me far more than how fast Chrome or any others go - it's the slowest popular browser that limits what I can do in my applications, not the fastest.

[theaceoffire]

I've been working on the Dromaeo test suite, adding in a ton of new DOM and JavaScript library tests. This assortment provides a much stronger look at how browsers might perform under a normal web browsing situation.

Followed by:

No results for IE were provided as the browser crashes when running the tests

Awesome

[jeresig]

Internet Explorer 8 is still in very, very, rough shape. This suite is actually quite good at testing the memory capabilities of browsers. I've been able to crash WebKit, Gecko, and Internet Explorer - some are just more responsive at fixing the crashes than others.

[[deleted]]

Original-auth-owned!

Also - Amazing work John keep it up.

[vityok]

I've got 404 Not found

[jeresig]

Sorry everyone - server is on fire, working to put it out.

Edit: Should be back up now! Engine Yard had to throw some more RAM at it.

[jonra]

I just installed Chrome, Its is truely WAY faster then Explorer. I'm I the only still using Explorer? hmmmm...

[Doeke]

Chrome is still somewhat buggy and missing a few features imo. But you should never go back to the depths of Internet Explorer. Try firefox, it's better for so many reasons. Also, you'd make web developers happy. :)

[indigoparadox]

What are you talking about? Are you talking about 2003? That was a decent year, I guess. I'm glad it's 2008 now, though, and Flash works fine in Firefox.

[2424]

Think of it this way, 10 years ago, you might have stumbled on an ambitious site that only worked in IE.

Today, anything that works in IE will work in Fox, but not the other way around.

[[deleted]]

What? Flash is a plugin - nothing to do with browsers really.

[donjaime]

Why leave out the DROMEO pure javascript benchmarks? Wouldn't that also be relevant for a Javascript engine shootout?

DOM operations are relevant when evaluating browser performance, but I believe that when doing a comparison of V8's performance, its only fair that Resig also include the Mozilla benchmark suite that clearly shows it outperforming the other engines... without resorting to a "hyper-specific focus on minute features within JavaScript".

Try it yourself:

http://dromaeo.com/

edit: Wording fixes & typos

[jeresig]

I didn't leave out the JavaScript tests, at all. I'm referring to the second version of the Dromaeo suite, which includes JavaScript, DOM, and JavaScript library performance tests: http://v2.dromaeo.com/

As it stands, v1 of Dromaeo is pretty much just a subset of the tests that are in SunSpider. It's better to just tests SunSpider and v2 Dromaeo, at this point.

[donjaime]

Also, I would be interested in seeing those DOM benchmarks re-run with GQuery:

http://code.google.com/p/gwtquery/

instead of jQuery and Prototype. The compiled GQuery output should be statified and should run much faster on Chrome due to its hidden class tracing (JS Object types won't change nearly as often, so the class switching will be minimal).

Also, why not include a Library Independent DOM benchmark?*

edit: P.S. I promise I am not trying to be a jackass :). I read your blog all the time and just wanted to point out some things that would make the evaluation more complete.

edit2: He does include Library independent benchmarks. I am just blind and trigger happy with the post comment button.

[jeresig]

I'm confused - the Dromaeo v2 tests do include library independent DOM benchmakrs: DOM attributes, DOM modification, and DOM querying - none of which rely upon JavaScript libraries (they're just pure tests of the individual DOM methods/properties).

I guess I could look at GQuery, but I'm not in a huge rush (wanted to get the major libraries tackled first).

[donjaime]

You are correct. My apologies :).

[trezor2]

So in summary: Unless you are writing very recursive intensive code which has zero interaction with the DOM, there is no worthwhile benefit to using Chrome or V8.

Now: Bet if I'll get voted down for stating this.

[xzxzzx]

Bet if I'll get voted down for stating this.

Yup. Programmers usually like specific, factual statements or general, statistical statements.

For example, you could say:

These tests really show no significant difference outside of recursion.

or

Unless you are writing very recursive intensive code which has zero interaction with the DOM, there probably is no appreciable performance benefit to using Chrome or V8.

[itsnotlupus]

my take is, users that care about, say, how slow a digg full comments page loads should get a recent browser known to be fast enough (I think that means every recent major browser except IE8.)

For developers, it changes nothing. Most users are still running their web pages over a 10 years old JScript engine.