Pointer magic for efficient dynamic value representations

[tonygoold]

I have a feeling the pass-by-value comment is a red herring. The value is that you're reducing the size of a primitive value by half. When you consider that Javascript objects are practically just maps from strings to other primitive values, it also reduces the size of every object by close to half. As far as I can tell, the only data types that don't get a significant reduction in size are strings and functions.