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QuickJS JavaScript Engine

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Re: QuickJS JavaScript Engine

#261

Post by neilv »

davesmith1983 wrote: post #258
neilv wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to get a sense of how smart RMS is, because he seems to be anti-showy about it. But I've seen him talk in different venues, and calibrate how much he says to the venue. I've also seen him ramp up how much detail he goes into, and what kinds of arguments he can make, when someone with a background in some area is challenging him on some point. I can't tell how smart he is, but I suspect that most people talk…

It hard to get a sense of how Smart RMS is, because he invents his own terms or he repurposes existing well understood terms (such as the term free) to confuse the issue. It is something I have little respect for and tbh it doesn't matter how clever it is when he spends most of that effort on for want of a better term intellectual wankery.

Saying "free software" drives me crazy, today.

Possibly in his defense, I suspect it made more sense at the time. He'd just tell other hackers "this is free software - free as in...", and they'd say "OK, that's an interesting idea that resonates with what we know and see", or "OK, that's some hippie stuff, but we've been benefiting from that kind of sharing in computing, so you might have a point". They'd hear that in-person, or on the Internet, or in the text files when they went to compile and install the software. Now most people never get the introduction, or it's drowned out in all the massive noise that everyone is exposed to on the Web.

Though maybe saying "free" still works for him, because, when he's giving a talk, he can say "this is free software - free as in..." and people are there, paying attention.

Also, it's in the brand name.

A wild speculation possibility is that he's still thinking decades ahead, and maybe we go back to trying to say substantive things, and paying attention when others say substantive things, and then saying "free software" makes more sense again. (Some other instances of thinking ahead are the reason behind a subreddit name: "https://old.reddit.com/r/StallmanWasRight/")

In any case, I think it's unfortunate if people dismiss RMS's speech without listening, because of quirks and things we don't immediately understand.

Re: QuickJS JavaScript Engine

#262

Post by neop1x »

kalium-xyz wrote: post #257
tombert wrote: post #25

Is there anything that Fabrice can't do? I mean, FFMpeg is almost a PhD thesis in and of itself, and he still manages to find time to make TinyC, QEMU, and now this. To say I'm jealous of his skills would be an understatement.

How do you become like this?

Hard work, math, learning and hard work again. Definitely not by drinking at various networking and social events as some people think. :)

Re: QuickJS JavaScript Engine

#264

Post by userbinator »

littlestymaar wrote: post #242
megous wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other bugs, too, like: 1420 th = js_mallocz(ctx, sizeof(*th)); 1421 th->has_object = TRUE; 1422 if (!th) { 1423 JS_FreeValue(ctx, obj); 1424 return JS_EXCEPTION; 1425 } But hey, that's gonna get ironed out. :)

This is still an important reminder that literally nobody in the world can write C code without memory issues. Even if the developer is a genius and the project isn't that big.

I'd be curious to see the total number of bugs ever found in this code; I suspect it's going to have a far lower defect density than any other JS engine, especially the ones in the big browsers.

Re: QuickJS JavaScript Engine

#265

Post by mootzville »

heapjs wrote: post #15

Would it be possible to compile a nodejs app to a binary with this? If so, would performance be any better?

I compiled a branch and bound program to test this.

Results for a 30x30 symmetric matrix processed using exact same code for both engines:

NodeJS: ~20 seconds QuickJS: ~200 seconds

So, from a single experiment QuickJS seems about 10x slower than NodeJS for this particular use case.

Re: QuickJS JavaScript Engine

#266

Post by davesmith1983 »

neilv wrote: post #261
davesmith1983 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It hard to get a sense of how Smart RMS is, because he invents his own terms or he repurposes existing well understood terms (such as the term free) to confuse the issue. It is something I have little respect for and tbh it doesn't matter how clever it is when he spends most of that effort on for want of a better term intellectual wankery.

Saying "free software" drives me crazy, today. Possibly in his defense, I suspect it made more sense at the time. He'd just tell other hackers "this is free software - free as in...", and they'd say "OK, that's an interesting idea that resonates with what we know and see", or "OK, that's some hippie stuff, but we've been benefiting from that kind of sharing in computing, so you might have a point". They'd hear that i…

I don't agree at all. From day one he been using intellectual wankery.

Regarding lists like r/stallmanwasright, I work with plenty of smart people who couldn't care less about free software some of them aren't even tech savvy and they can spot all the problems with a lot of the services we have today.

I think it is more an exercise of throwing shit at a wall until and seeing what sticks. Which btw is a perfectly valid method of seeing how your message gets across but it doesn't make you a genius.

That combined with awful manners, hygiene and the fact that he has some disgusting opinions about child abuse. I can't stand the man. The fact that this guy has any importance past "Well he was the founder of the GNU project and he wrote a text editor" seems ludicrous to me.

Re: QuickJS JavaScript Engine

#268

Post by rick22 »

Does Fabrice Bellard knows any other language other than 'c' ?. Looks all his works are in 'c'. Just trying to look if there is a correlation among the 100x programmers and the number of languages they know. Because being extremely proficient in a language is important to be highly productive.

Re: QuickJS JavaScript Engine

#269

Post by neilv »

davesmith1983 wrote: post #266
neilv wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying "free software" drives me crazy, today. Possibly in his defense, I suspect it made more sense at the time. He'd just tell other hackers "this is free software - free as in...", and they'd say "OK, that's an interesting idea that resonates with what we know and see", or "OK, that's some hippie stuff, but we've been benefiting from that kind of sharing in computing, so you might have a point". They'd hear that i…

I don't agree at all. From day one he been using intellectual wankery. Regarding lists like r/stallmanwasright, I work with plenty of smart people who couldn't care less about free software some of them aren't even tech savvy and they can spot all the problems with a lot of the services we have today. I think it is more an exercise of throwing shit at a wall until and seeing what sticks. Which btw is a perfectly vali…

I think the difficulty for me in responding here is that your comment contains both assertions about intellectual merit (which could be interesting to explore), and more broad aversion to the person (which might be relevant to intellectual merit, and/or to the meta of dialogue about that, but is a manners minefield).

This thread is pretty tangential to the post to start with, so there will be better occasions to discuss these things. And maybe it helps to separate them out differently.

Re: QuickJS JavaScript Engine

#270

Post by ibly31 »

dang wrote: post #187
kizer wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn’t sarcasm. I was being sincere.

I believe you, but a comment like that is going to pattern-match to the internet default, which is snark, in nearly every reader's mind.

I think you are overreacting here, his comment was definitely not interpreted as sarcastic. Quite the opposite, it was showing appreciation for what an achievement QuickJS is.
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