5 ms·

I bet if you compared single threaded performance you’d still blow Babel out of the water. Even with the best JITs, idiomatic js code is so much harder/impossib

I bet if you compared single threaded performance you’d still blow Babel out of the water. Even with the best JITs, idiomatic js code is so much harder/impossible to optimize than idiomatic rust or c/c++ code.

steveklabnik 8y ago
This might be true, but Babel is a big, important project. I’d have expected performance to be something they’ve invested in. That may be wrong.
- acemarke 8y ago
  The Babel team is great.... and they're also tiny, overworked, and underfunded. (See some of Henry Zhu's recent conference talks on dealing with being an OSS maintainer for background.) I think Babel 7 had some perf improvements (including tweaks contributed by Benedikt Meurer from the v8 team), but I don't think they've ever had time to focus on just improving perf.
  - hzoo 8y ago
    Yep there's been various PRs for perf over the years but it's never been a focus per-se, and we've had help from various people including the v8 team https://twitter.com/left_pad/status/927554660508028929 https://twitter.com/left_pad/status/927554660508028929. Haha yeah no one wants to hear about open source sustainability in a thread about asking that tools be correct/fast/easy to use at the same time :D It's true, speed is not really a concern on my mind at the moment - rather that we have enough people even willing to contribute back at all
    - steveklabnik 8y ago
      Trust me, I am well aware that even big open source projects don’t get the resourcing they deserve. Everyone always has to make do. Babel is a fantastic project.
      - hzoo 8y ago
        haha oops I totally wasn't looking at who I commenting with, definitely agree! Thanks!
        steveklabnik 8y ago
        No oops required! I should have been more careful in my initial phrasing. I certainly don’t want to imply that you should be doing even more work!
  - steveklabnik 8y ago
    Yeah, those kind of one-off contributions was what I was meaning. You are 100% right with regards to expectations, and I don’t mean to imply that they should have. Only that it’s a bit more likely than some random projetct that nobody uses.

steveklabnik 8y ago

This might be true, but Babel is a big, important project. I’d have expected performance to be something they’ve invested in. That may be wrong.

acemarke 8y ago
The Babel team is great.... and they're also tiny, overworked, and underfunded. (See some of Henry Zhu's recent conference talks on dealing with being an OSS maintainer for background.) I think Babel 7 had some perf improvements (including tweaks contributed by Benedikt Meurer from the v8 team), but I don't think they've ever had time to focus on just improving perf.
- hzoo 8y ago
  Yep there's been various PRs for perf over the years but it's never been a focus per-se, and we've had help from various people including the v8 team https://twitter.com/left_pad/status/927554660508028929 https://twitter.com/left_pad/status/927554660508028929. Haha yeah no one wants to hear about open source sustainability in a thread about asking that tools be correct/fast/easy to use at the same time :D It's true, speed is not really a concern on my mind at the moment - rather that we have enough people even willing to contribute back at all
  - steveklabnik 8y ago
    Trust me, I am well aware that even big open source projects don’t get the resourcing they deserve. Everyone always has to make do. Babel is a fantastic project.
    - hzoo 8y ago
      haha oops I totally wasn't looking at who I commenting with, definitely agree! Thanks!
      - steveklabnik 8y ago
        No oops required! I should have been more careful in my initial phrasing. I certainly don’t want to imply that you should be doing even more work!
- steveklabnik 8y ago
  Yeah, those kind of one-off contributions was what I was meaning. You are 100% right with regards to expectations, and I don’t mean to imply that they should have. Only that it’s a bit more likely than some random projetct that nobody uses.