A small but complete JavaScript engine

QuickJS is quite a pleasure to work with, for variety of reasons. Not using setjmp/longjmp and having a nice internal resource leak debugging mechanisms are just a few of them. I've already replaced most of my duktape uses with QuickJS, and I'm quite happy with the result.

Re: A small but complete JavaScript engine

#5

Post by choeger » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 9:44 PM UTC

That's truly impressive.

Re: A small but complete JavaScript engine

#6

Post by Macuyiko » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 10:21 PM UTC

iamvnraju wrote: post #2

Frabrice Bellard truly works in God mode. Ffmpeg, Qemu, Tiny C Compiler ... many others .. and now this!

Agreed. 10 years ago, I could still pretend I'd be able to come close to his productivity if I "just set my mind to it." Today (being older, slower, and having a family), I can only be humble.

Re: A small but complete JavaScript engine

#7

Post by Wowfunhappy » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 10:26 PM UTC

Could this potentially be used in a browser? How complete is “complete”?

Browser diversity is top of mind for me...

Re: A small but complete JavaScript engine

#8

Post by leetrout » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 10:36 PM UTC

Macuyiko wrote: post #6

iamvnraju wrote: post #2

Frabrice Bellard truly works in God mode. Ffmpeg, Qemu, Tiny C Compiler ... many others .. and now this!

Agreed. 10 years ago, I could still pretend I'd be able to come close to his productivity if I "just set my mind to it." Today (being older, slower, and having a family), I can only be humble.

I’m really starting to feel the age and competing priorities with family. Makes me really scared about ageism.

Re: A small but complete JavaScript engine

#9

Post by staunch » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 10:41 PM UTC

iamvnraju wrote: post #2

Frabrice Bellard truly works in God mode. Ffmpeg, Qemu, Tiny C Compiler ... many others .. and now this!

He really has done so much incredible work. I'd love a Fabrice Bellard interview/podcast/tech talk but found none when searching. If anyone has a link, please post it!

Re: A small but complete JavaScript engine

#10

Post by seph-reed » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 10:42 PM UTC

Here's a really interesting video about speed performance of the v8 engine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC_QLLilwso

The basic points: They watch functions for "hotness" (how often they are ran). Then, any function that is super hot, they'll see if it's being ran consistently (ie always receives two numbers as its arguments). Then they'll make a streamlined interpretation of the js code which only checks the arguments and then skips pretty much all the other checks. By doing this, it makes JS significantly faster.

If you're trying to compare and contrast v8 to quickjs, this is the first thing that comes to mind for me as to what they may be doing differently.