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QuickJS JavaScript Engine

bellard.org

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Re: QuickJS JavaScript Engine

#221

Post by neilv »

dig1 wrote: post #212
ksec wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have two question in my mind. 1. Are there anyone on HN knows him in real life? 2. Does anyone have other people in their mind who is in the same league as this man? Mike Pall's LuaJIT sort of make him at this level but that is only one thing. Fabrice create things that everyone are using it one way or another, and if it wasn't HEVC patents mess we would have his bpg [1] replacing jpeg. [1] https://bellard.org/bpg/

Guy L. Steele - no proper language design can go without him. I think he is the only person who enjoys writing language reference manuals and is able to explain every language detail mathematically and linguistically everyone can understand. He was behind C, Java, Scheme, Common Lisp, ECMA, Fortan...

Incidentally, Steele has an anecdote of perhaps an early instance of pair-programming with someone else mentioned in these HN comments, Richard Stallman (at the end of this chapter): https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch06.html

Re: QuickJS JavaScript Engine

#222

Post by draw_down »

andrewstuart wrote: post #170
userbinator wrote: post #159

Wow. The core is a single 1.5MB file that's very readable, it supports nearly all of the latest standard, and Bellard even added his own extensions on top of that. It has compile-time options for either a NaN-boxing or traditional tagged union object representation, so he didn't just go for a single minimal implementation (unlike e.g. OTCC) but even had the time and energy to explore a bit. I like the fact that it's…

>> Despite my general distaste for JS largely due to websites tending to abuse it more than anything Why would you have a distaste for JavaScript based on how others use it? JavaScript has evolved into an extremely powerful and flexible language which is taking many great lessons from other languages. Sure its not perfect but its a real workhorse. EDIT: I know you're not meant to ask why the downvotes, but I do wonde…

Right, people here wouldn’t accept that reasoning for any other language.

Re: QuickJS JavaScript Engine

#223

Post by repolfx »

userbinator wrote: post #186
keyle wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing to note... he doesn't bother himself with pretty websites, community building of any kind, splash pages... It's just plain html. Not even github as far as I could tell. He just works on the tech and puts it out there with benchmarks as proof of his claims.

His humility (and general lack of "marketing wank" on his site) is certainly another aspect I admire. There's far too much "look at my absolutely amazing $trivial_app with best-in-class X and high-quality Y and gorgeous Z and ..." out there, that just seeing the equivalent of "This is a JS engine I wrote." and a simple enumeration of features without all that embellishment feels very refreshing.

Yes that's true in general, but ... I hate to be the party pooper here, but ....

What makes this JS implementation deserve the name "Quick"?

I noticed it doesn't appear to do JIT compilation or any of the fancy optimisations V8 does. So whilst it may start up quickly, and may interpret quickly, it won't actually execute JS quickly relative to V8, unless I missed something huge in the linked web page.

I got the sense there are several performance claims here that sound impressive but won't actually matter for nearly every JavaScript user.

Re: QuickJS JavaScript Engine

#224

Post by jerome_k »

ricardobeat wrote: post #89
jerome_k wrote: post #44

I like that Bellard released the source code in old school tar format rather than on github. The world's code collaboration platform is of little use to the world's best programmer. Hopefully QuickJS won't discourage the author of Duktape from making future releases of his incredible small low-memory JS engine.

What's to like about it? First thing I wanted to do is look at the sources, which is now a multiple-step process - especially since I'm on windows and usually work on a Mac. Not to mention mobile.

> What's to like about it? First thing I wanted to do is look at the sources, which is now a multiple-step process - especially since I'm on windows and usually work on a Mac. Not to mention mobile.

Such hardship. High quality software is provided for free and people are complaining about the distribution format? Code was developed just fine before github. If viewing files in a tarball is an impediment then this library is not for you.

Re: QuickJS JavaScript Engine

#225

Post by mkl »

dig1 wrote: post #212
ksec wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have two question in my mind. 1. Are there anyone on HN knows him in real life? 2. Does anyone have other people in their mind who is in the same league as this man? Mike Pall's LuaJIT sort of make him at this level but that is only one thing. Fabrice create things that everyone are using it one way or another, and if it wasn't HEVC patents mess we would have his bpg [1] replacing jpeg. [1] https://bellard.org/bpg/

Guy L. Steele - no proper language design can go without him. I think he is the only person who enjoys writing language reference manuals and is able to explain every language detail mathematically and linguistically everyone can understand. He was behind C, Java, Scheme, Common Lisp, ECMA, Fortan...

Perhaps you mean behind standards and reference manuals for, rather than behind the languages? Behind Scheme and Common Lisp, okay. But he contributed to standardisation and documentation of the others after their creation, rather than being one of their designers.

Re: QuickJS JavaScript Engine

#226

Post by nwmcsween »

root_axis wrote: post #192
andrewstuart wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Despite my general distaste for JS largely due to websites tending to abuse it more than anything Why would you have a distaste for JavaScript based on how others use it? JavaScript has evolved into an extremely powerful and flexible language which is taking many great lessons from other languages. Sure its not perfect but its a real workhorse. EDIT: I know you're not meant to ask why the downvotes, but I do wonde…

JS is the new PHP. It's really popular (i.e. lots of n00bs) and not at all elegant, so the programmer elite regard it with derision. I also notice people often conflate the problems of overzealous browser-based scripting with JavaScript the programming language. This is pretty understandable since JavaScript has been the only browser scripting option for 2 decades, but those problems would exist no matter what option…

> not at all elegant, so the programmer elite regard it with derision

Having both programmed PHP and Javascript extensively, PHP when it was first designed was absolute junk, functions were bucketed by strlen. Javascript at least had some semblance of sanity even with the wonky comparison mess and ===.

Re: QuickJS JavaScript Engine

#227

Post by tuesdayrain »

root_axis wrote: post #192
andrewstuart wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Despite my general distaste for JS largely due to websites tending to abuse it more than anything Why would you have a distaste for JavaScript based on how others use it? JavaScript has evolved into an extremely powerful and flexible language which is taking many great lessons from other languages. Sure its not perfect but its a real workhorse. EDIT: I know you're not meant to ask why the downvotes, but I do wonde…

JS is the new PHP. It's really popular (i.e. lots of n00bs) and not at all elegant, so the programmer elite regard it with derision. I also notice people often conflate the problems of overzealous browser-based scripting with JavaScript the programming language. This is pretty understandable since JavaScript has been the only browser scripting option for 2 decades, but those problems would exist no matter what option…

> JS is the new PHP. It's really popular (i.e. lots of n00bs) and not at all elegant, so the programmer elite regard it with derision.

I would love to find a language I consider more elegant than modern JS/TS. Haven't seen anything yet though. I also question your claim that it's the "elite" who regard JS with derision. Fabrice is presumably fine with it considering he spent valuable time writing an engine for it.

Re: QuickJS JavaScript Engine

#228

Post by tluyben2 »

Accacin wrote: post #216
userbinator wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of JS I come across on sites that is purely superfluous and serves to irritate, manipulate, or simply waste resources far outnumbers the actually useful, efficient, and purposeful use of it in webapps. I'm talking about things like loading several MB of it with half a dozen frameworks and libraries, just to render a few KB of text. Don't even get me started on popups/popunders/popins/clickjacking/scrolljac…

Ok, so this comment is so cliche it's getting hard to ignore. Yes, JavaScript is abused but the problem is that people by large enjoy these types of site. I've never heard my parents or non-developer friends complain about a site using too much JavaScript, but if I show them Hacker News or old.reddit.com, they'll complain it looks ugly and hard to read/use and really do lose interest in it immediately. Anyway, I fail…

> I've never heard my parents or non-developer friends complain about a site using too much JavaScript

How can they? They don't know what it is. They are complaining about it a lot of times you don't hear about it; every time they have to fill an abomination of a form, every time they hard-close their browser because it's stuck, every time they just wait for a page to load, every time 'something' happens they did not ask for but it happened anyway.

That's not the fault of JS but it is the problem of the ecosystem, the ease of use etc. Messing things up and 'good enough' are very popular things it seems. The thing is that, on the internet, good enough can go wrong in many ways. And the ways it does just tired people out in reporting it. Besides the billion $ sites (and still there , but less), there are so many bugs in the average website; we just ignore them and start over or go somewhere else because it's just not worth burning your energy on; no-one is going to change. And a lot of that is broken JS. Again, not the fault of the language JavaScript, but of the fast and loose usage of the language.

Anecdotally, but I am sure this resonates with people who sometimes do not order only from Amazon, I tried to order some impossible meat from a site here and when it was time to pay, there was a JS undefined error and it emptied my shopping cart. This happens a billion times a day all over the place.

JavaScript is vilified by 'the elite' because of it and that's unfair, but the ecosystem promotes it. Everyone is focused on 'process' (CI, deployment, many irrelevant unit tests; a lot of busy work basically) and 'beautiful code' (style, linting, things a beautifier can do for you automatically) and ego (github stars), but robustness or longevity is just not really a focus of many.

Re: QuickJS JavaScript Engine

#229

Post by duckerude »

repolfx wrote: post #223
userbinator wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His humility (and general lack of "marketing wank" on his site) is certainly another aspect I admire. There's far too much "look at my absolutely amazing $trivial_app with best-in-class X and high-quality Y and gorgeous Z and ..." out there, that just seeing the equivalent of "This is a JS engine I wrote." and a simple enumeration of features without all that embellishment feels very refreshing.

Yes that's true in general, but ... I hate to be the party pooper here, but .... What makes this JS implementation deserve the name "Quick"? I noticed it doesn't appear to do JIT compilation or any of the fancy optimisations V8 does. So whilst it may start up quickly, and may interpret quickly, it won't actually execute JS quickly relative to V8, unless I missed something huge in the linked web page. I got the sense…

It seems to be relatively very fast in the space of small javascript interpreters meant for embedding. That's a different niche with different constraints.

Re: QuickJS JavaScript Engine

#230

Post by JasonFruit »

fatbird wrote: post #183
clopez wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linus Torvalds? He created Linux and git. Arguably the two most successful open source projects ever.

Linus has demonstrated incredible long-term effectiveness as a software developer, both creating and then shepherding two of the most important pieces of software of the last 50 years. But he seems qualitatively different than Ballard. I'm trying to put into words what the difference feels like. Git and linux demonstrate, for Linus, great intelligence but not genius, the way Ballard's works do. And on Linus' side, gi…

Torvalds is like Brahms, who published relatively few works, but polished, refined, and winnowed them until they were of very high quality. He wrote his duds, but he knew enough not to publish them. Ballard is like Bach: an unbroken series of gems, mostly small- to medium-sized, each one an immaculate work of craftsmanship wedded to incandescent genius. Nothing in the entire hoard is inferior work --- there's nothing you can point to and say, "Bach screwed up here."
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