13 ms·

Optimize your Node app by upgrading Node.js

143 points by ecares 10y ago

partycoder 10y ago
A quadratic algorithm optimized by v8 will be still quadratic. While these optimizations can be helpful, real problem is order of growth. To optimize order of growth problems knowledge of algorithms and data structures is important. Optimization can be assisted by instrumentation and profiling.
- seangrogg 10y ago
  > A quadratic algorithm optimized by v8 will be still quadratic. That's pretty obvious. An engine's optimization features are there to help execute code faster, not as a substitute for knowledge about algorithms and data structures. The implication here is that being respectful of both solid CS theory and an engine's optimized patterns allows you to benefit from both, not just one or another.
  - partycoder 10y ago
    I had an application with a performance bottleneck once, and people kept telling me that the solution was to upgrade node. I ignored them, ran a profiler, found a bottleneck and fixed the bottleneck. Sounds obvious but not everyone is familiar with performance optimization.
    - seangrogg 10y ago
      Out of curiosity did you also check to see if upgrading node would've also been to your benefit? It could just be a side-effect of working at a large company with smart people, but if "people" are telling me the solution is an upgrade I wouldn't be doing my due diligence to ignore them all. Not trying to invalidate the fact that you found a way to enhance performance via profiling - that's great! But the way you phrased your response seemed very condescending of "people" when there may have been truth to what they said.
- jfroma 10y ago
  I agree that this the last thing I would check. An application can work perfectly find with some functions not optimized. In fact, I have find unoptimized functions in node.js itself last week in the streams abstractions. Regarding performance of node.js applications I often find myself looking at my cpu profiles and memory dumps in node-inspector because the most common problems are eventloop starvation, memory leaks or long GC pauses.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
recursive 10y ago
According to the table, there are an increasing number of constructs that prevent optimization. The oldest versions of node seem to have no constructs that prevent optimization. Can that be right?
- ecares 10y ago
  The sentence before the table is mistaking. We are updating it. It should be read in the other direction: if the cell contains "yes", the code pattern is optimizable. Thanks a lot for your remark!
  - k__ 10y ago
    but only a few contain yes, so most aren't optimizable?
    - ecares 10y ago
      yes, that's the case.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
Kiro 10y ago
> the JavaScript engine will not accept to optimize it What does this mean? I don't understand if it's good or bad. Sounds bad but seems good according to the table?
- ecares 10y ago
  This misleading part of the article has been updated for more clarity. The concept of non-optimization is describbed in my previous article: https://community.risingstack.com/how-to-find-node-js-performance-optimization-killers/ https://community.risingstack.com/how-to-find-node-js-perfor... tl;dr: you want to avoid patterns that prevent optimization: the ones with a red "no" in the table.
okket 10y ago
FYI: 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-february-edition/ http://benediktmeurer.de/2017/03/01/v8-behind-the-scenes-feb... https://github.com/v8/v8/wiki/TurboFan https://github.com/v8/v8/wiki/TurboFan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1FBosB5tjM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1FBosB5tjM
- ecares 10y ago
  You are right, some patterns (like try-catch) have been made optimizable thanks to TurboFan. However: * until ignition is not available by default on Node.js (now only through the --ignition flag, or using current master), a lot of these optimization tricks will stay up to date. Also, companies have a history of moving slowly to newer versions of Node.js. * even with ignition (I just tested it), using Generators (including async functions) is an optimization killer.
  - __s 10y ago
    Chrome's generators are still quite fast compared to Firefox. I've currently got a generator stress test in using generators to implement a lua parser: https://github.com/serprex/luwa/blob/2c1ef6be42b804144340a2e8fb79cbfeb4bc9e8a/ast.js https://github.com/serprex/luwa/blob/2c1ef6be42b804144340a2e... Currently trying to rewrite the Exp rule from using combinators to using something that'll properly handle operator precedence (Not keen on having 11 levels of operator precedence encoded in the grammar)
StyloBill 10y ago
Unrelated and I'm sorry for that, but do you know of a good way to get rid of the scroll hijacking? I didn't find a lot of extensions for Chrome and the one I tried wasn't working. It blows my mind to encounter this bad practice on a developper related website.
- twiss 10y ago
  In this case, it can be fixed by running this in the developer tools: getEventListeners(window).wheel[0].remove()
  - faitswulff 10y ago
    Hm, this isn't working for me. I've been searching for a way to undo scrolljacking for a while, so I'm curious how to get it to work. What browser are you using? I tried in Chrome (56.0.2924.87) and Firefox (forgot what version and now it's updating). Firefox doesn't even respond to `getEventListeners` and in Chrome I'm seeing `.scroll` instead of `.wheel`.
    - twiss 10y ago
      It works for me in Chrome 56 and 57 on Linux. In Firefox, the scroll isn't hijacked (presumably chosen because Firefox has had smooth scrolling longer?), but in Firefox 52 (but not 54) this still improves scroll performance a whole lot: window.addEventListener('scroll', function(evt) { evt.stopImmediatePropagation(); }, true)
      - josteink 10y ago
        Wow yeah. That's noticable to the point that it's almost extension-worthy. Any idea how much potential that snippet has for causing issues if applied generally across the board?
    - Flow 10y ago
      I've not tried this plugin, but it might do just what you want. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/disable-scroll-jacking/ehpdicggenhgapiikfpnmppdonadlnmp https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/disable-scroll-jac...
mikewhy 10y ago
> Object literal containing a getter and object literal containing a setter Isn't this something Babel does quite often?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Pigo 10y ago
I'd really like to find a position doing more Node development. It seems like every place in my area that claims to just uses npm. I've had to learn the MEAN stack on my own, and it feels like it outperforms a lot of the apps I've built in other stacks.
- dawnerd 10y ago
  Look into remote jobs. Plenty of people that need skilled node developers.
  - egfx 10y ago
    Can you name a few? I'm looking.
    - cosinetau 10y ago
      Next Monday, I assume HN will post their "Who wants to be hired " thread. Perhaps search for "node" within it.
    - dawnerd 10y ago
      Don't have any offhand but I'm constantly seeing friends asking for node devs.
    - tbrock 10y ago
      Hustle Inc: we are looking for nodejs devs, have an entirely modern stack, es6+, react, react native, etc... If you love JavaScript we want you to work with us. Drop me a line through my profile.
      - Pigo 10y ago
        The only thing I'm not as familiar with is react, I've spent most of my time learning Angular 2 lately. And as I've mentioned, I haven't ran into a lot of people looking for these more modern skills. Is there more companies looking for react than Angular?
- 10y ago
orf 10y ago
Ok, seems like an interesting article but what the hell is up with those share icons. On your mobile if you rotate the screen to read the interesting table they cover up the first damn column. Then you rotate it back to portrait and they don't move back. Fix your website. Remove those silly icons!
- tedunangst 10y ago
  But muh growth hacking!
- kristopolous 10y ago
  But irritating 90% of your audience with a distracting something that only 1% of them use is the preferred stylish design choice of the modern era. Whether it's share buttons or an email signup...I mean heck, Europe essentially passed a mandatory website popup law for telling you about cookies.
  - Traubenfuchs 10y ago
    They ended that law a while ago by the way. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/10/brussels_announces_death_sentence_for_cookie_popup/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/10/brussels_announces_...
josteink 10y ago
I find the (repeated) use of the word polymorphism here a bit confusing... I'm mostly used to it an class inheritance-related contexts. Is it used differently in the Node/JS-community?
- nickfargo 10y ago
  This is a different notion of polymorphism, yes. Suggested reading: http://mrale.ph/blog/2015/01/11/whats-up-with-monomorphism.html http://mrale.ph/blog/2015/01/11/whats-up-with-monomorphism.h...
defined 10y ago
I was at first excited, then deflated, because I initially read the headline as "Optimize your Node app by deleting Node.js" (snerk).
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
chmln 10y ago
The new major version 8 of Node.js coming out in April will be a great performance booster for those who started using async/await and more: - Node upgraded v8 to 5.7 [1] & async functions as fast as promises [2] - Optimizations in fs[3] [1] https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/11752 https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/11752 [2] https://v8project.blogspot.ca/2017/02/v8-release-57.html https://v8project.blogspot.ca/2017/02/v8-release-57.html [3] https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/12105 https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/12105

143 points by ecares 10y ago

A quadratic algorithm optimized by v8 will be still quadratic. While these optimizations can be helpful, real problem is order of growth. To optimize order of growth problems knowledge of algorithms and data structures is important. Optimization can be assisted by instrumentation and profiling.

seangrogg 10y ago
> A quadratic algorithm optimized by v8 will be still quadratic. That's pretty obvious. An engine's optimization features are there to help execute code faster, not as a substitute for knowledge about algorithms and data structures. The implication here is that being respectful of both solid CS theory and an engine's optimized patterns allows you to benefit from both, not just one or another.
- partycoder 10y ago
  I had an application with a performance bottleneck once, and people kept telling me that the solution was to upgrade node. I ignored them, ran a profiler, found a bottleneck and fixed the bottleneck. Sounds obvious but not everyone is familiar with performance optimization.
  - seangrogg 10y ago
    Out of curiosity did you also check to see if upgrading node would've also been to your benefit? It could just be a side-effect of working at a large company with smart people, but if "people" are telling me the solution is an upgrade I wouldn't be doing my due diligence to ignore them all. Not trying to invalidate the fact that you found a way to enhance performance via profiling - that's great! But the way you phrased your response seemed very condescending of "people" when there may have been truth to what they said.
jfroma 10y ago
I agree that this the last thing I would check. An application can work perfectly find with some functions not optimized. In fact, I have find unoptimized functions in node.js itself last week in the streams abstractions. Regarding performance of node.js applications I often find myself looking at my cpu profiles and memory dumps in node-inspector because the most common problems are eventloop starvation, memory leaks or long GC pauses.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

recursive 10y ago

According to the table, there are an increasing number of constructs that prevent optimization. The oldest versions of node seem to have no constructs that prevent optimization. Can that be right?

ecares 10y ago
The sentence before the table is mistaking. We are updating it. It should be read in the other direction: if the cell contains "yes", the code pattern is optimizable. Thanks a lot for your remark!
- k__ 10y ago
  but only a few contain yes, so most aren't optimizable?
  - ecares 10y ago
    yes, that's the case.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

Kiro 10y ago

> the JavaScript engine will not accept to optimize it What does this mean? I don't understand if it's good or bad. Sounds bad but seems good according to the table?

ecares 10y ago
This misleading part of the article has been updated for more clarity. The concept of non-optimization is describbed in my previous article: https://community.risingstack.com/how-to-find-node-js-performance-optimization-killers/ https://community.risingstack.com/how-to-find-node-js-perfor... tl;dr: you want to avoid patterns that prevent optimization: the ones with a red "no" in the table.

okket 10y ago

FYI: 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-february-edition/ http://benediktmeurer.de/2017/03/01/v8-behind-the-scenes-feb... https://github.com/v8/v8/wiki/TurboFan https://github.com/v8/v8/wiki/TurboFan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1FBosB5tjM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1FBosB5tjM

ecares 10y ago
You are right, some patterns (like try-catch) have been made optimizable thanks to TurboFan. However: * until ignition is not available by default on Node.js (now only through the --ignition flag, or using current master), a lot of these optimization tricks will stay up to date. Also, companies have a history of moving slowly to newer versions of Node.js. * even with ignition (I just tested it), using Generators (including async functions) is an optimization killer.
- __s 10y ago
  Chrome's generators are still quite fast compared to Firefox. I've currently got a generator stress test in using generators to implement a lua parser: https://github.com/serprex/luwa/blob/2c1ef6be42b804144340a2e8fb79cbfeb4bc9e8a/ast.js https://github.com/serprex/luwa/blob/2c1ef6be42b804144340a2e... Currently trying to rewrite the Exp rule from using combinators to using something that'll properly handle operator precedence (Not keen on having 11 levels of operator precedence encoded in the grammar)

StyloBill 10y ago

Unrelated and I'm sorry for that, but do you know of a good way to get rid of the scroll hijacking? I didn't find a lot of extensions for Chrome and the one I tried wasn't working. It blows my mind to encounter this bad practice on a developper related website.

twiss 10y ago
In this case, it can be fixed by running this in the developer tools: getEventListeners(window).wheel[0].remove()
- faitswulff 10y ago
  Hm, this isn't working for me. I've been searching for a way to undo scrolljacking for a while, so I'm curious how to get it to work. What browser are you using? I tried in Chrome (56.0.2924.87) and Firefox (forgot what version and now it's updating). Firefox doesn't even respond to `getEventListeners` and in Chrome I'm seeing `.scroll` instead of `.wheel`.
  - twiss 10y ago
    It works for me in Chrome 56 and 57 on Linux. In Firefox, the scroll isn't hijacked (presumably chosen because Firefox has had smooth scrolling longer?), but in Firefox 52 (but not 54) this still improves scroll performance a whole lot: window.addEventListener('scroll', function(evt) { evt.stopImmediatePropagation(); }, true)
    - josteink 10y ago
      Wow yeah. That's noticable to the point that it's almost extension-worthy. Any idea how much potential that snippet has for causing issues if applied generally across the board?
  - Flow 10y ago
    I've not tried this plugin, but it might do just what you want. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/disable-scroll-jacking/ehpdicggenhgapiikfpnmppdonadlnmp https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/disable-scroll-jac...

mikewhy 10y ago

> Object literal containing a getter and object literal containing a setter Isn't this something Babel does quite often?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

Pigo 10y ago

I'd really like to find a position doing more Node development. It seems like every place in my area that claims to just uses npm. I've had to learn the MEAN stack on my own, and it feels like it outperforms a lot of the apps I've built in other stacks.

dawnerd 10y ago
Look into remote jobs. Plenty of people that need skilled node developers.
- egfx 10y ago
  Can you name a few? I'm looking.
  - cosinetau 10y ago
    Next Monday, I assume HN will post their "Who wants to be hired " thread. Perhaps search for "node" within it.
  - dawnerd 10y ago
    Don't have any offhand but I'm constantly seeing friends asking for node devs.
  - tbrock 10y ago
    Hustle Inc: we are looking for nodejs devs, have an entirely modern stack, es6+, react, react native, etc... If you love JavaScript we want you to work with us. Drop me a line through my profile.
    - Pigo 10y ago
      The only thing I'm not as familiar with is react, I've spent most of my time learning Angular 2 lately. And as I've mentioned, I haven't ran into a lot of people looking for these more modern skills. Is there more companies looking for react than Angular?
10y ago

orf 10y ago

Ok, seems like an interesting article but what the hell is up with those share icons. On your mobile if you rotate the screen to read the interesting table they cover up the first damn column. Then you rotate it back to portrait and they don't move back. Fix your website. Remove those silly icons!

tedunangst 10y ago
But muh growth hacking!
kristopolous 10y ago
But irritating 90% of your audience with a distracting something that only 1% of them use is the preferred stylish design choice of the modern era. Whether it's share buttons or an email signup...I mean heck, Europe essentially passed a mandatory website popup law for telling you about cookies.
- Traubenfuchs 10y ago
  They ended that law a while ago by the way. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/10/brussels_announces_death_sentence_for_cookie_popup/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/10/brussels_announces_...

josteink 10y ago

I find the (repeated) use of the word polymorphism here a bit confusing... I'm mostly used to it an class inheritance-related contexts. Is it used differently in the Node/JS-community?

nickfargo 10y ago
This is a different notion of polymorphism, yes. Suggested reading: http://mrale.ph/blog/2015/01/11/whats-up-with-monomorphism.html http://mrale.ph/blog/2015/01/11/whats-up-with-monomorphism.h...

defined 10y ago

I was at first excited, then deflated, because I initially read the headline as "Optimize your Node app by deleting Node.js" (snerk).

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

chmln 10y ago

The new major version 8 of Node.js coming out in April will be a great performance booster for those who started using async/await and more: - Node upgraded v8 to 5.7 [1] & async functions as fast as promises [2] - Optimizations in fs[3] [1] https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/11752 https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/11752 [2] https://v8project.blogspot.ca/2017/02/v8-release-57.html https://v8project.blogspot.ca/2017/02/v8-release-57.html [3] https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/12105 https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/12105