
Energizing Atom with V8's custom startup snapshot - s3th
https://v8project.blogspot.com/2017/05/energizing-atom-with-v8s-custom-start.html
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ianlevesque
So this is basically the emacs startup hack? Ugh.

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beaconstudios
for those of us who aren't familiar - what's the emacs startup hack, and why
is is detrimental?

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predakanga
The emacs startup hack is in it's use of a glibc function called "unexec",
which essentially serializes the program's state into a single binary which
can later be executed normally.

One of the big downsides (and the reason it became well known) is it's lack of
portability, as it requires in-depth knowledge of the system's memory
structures.

LWN article and previous HN discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11001796](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11001796)
Somewhat lower-level article that shines some light:
[http://emacshorrors.com/posts/unexecute.html](http://emacshorrors.com/posts/unexecute.html)

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slackingoff2017
Can we just compile js to bytecode? It's silly making huge apps in a language
that has to be parsed and compiled on the fly

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astrodust
Get to work on a Webassembly compiler and your wish might be granted.

[http://webassembly.org](http://webassembly.org)

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spiderfarmer
The Tanks demo makes my CPU hurt (15" rMBP, Firefox).

Why is WebGL still so heavy on the CPU?

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josh64
It works fine on my 2011 15" macbook pro with Firefox 54.0b4. I wonder if it
is the high retina resolution thats the problem for you?

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spiderfarmer
It might be because the macbook is also driving a 4k display at the same time.

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amelius
Sorry, but what an incredible kludge.

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jackmott
There are only so many brain cells on earth, can we stop using them to make
javascript things on the desktop slightly less slow? Let's just not use it.

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roryisok
You think that's a waste of brain power? By 2014 humans had collectively spent
200,000 years playing angry birds. That was 3 years ago, and I'm sure pokemon
go has at least tripled that record by now. Between than and all other video
games we've probably spent in the tens of millions of years button mashing, if
not the hundreds.

But yeah lets stop people trying to make JavaScript faster

