

SpiderMonkey is on a diet - ww520
http://blog.mozilla.com/nnethercote/2011/11/01/spidermonkey-is-on-a-diet/

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moomin
Fascinating article. Maybe I'm old, but I remember when TraceMonkey was the
wave of the future that was going to outperform everything, not a hairball
they'll be glad to see the back of.

I would be very interested to read their learnings from TraceMonkey, though.

~~~
cookiecaper
> _Fascinating article. Maybe I'm old, but I remember when TraceMonkey was the
> wave of the future that was going to outperform everything, not a hairball
> they'll be glad to see the back of._

I remember this too. It seems not so long ago I was reading benchmarks on
shaver's blog demonstrating TraceMonkey's performance as largely comparable to
the then-new V8. I agree that is kind of weird to hear that people hate the
code and that Mozilla is throwing it out already.

I have perhaps not kept super informed on Firefox's JS internals, just reading
a stray article here and there, but it raises some concerning questions for me
that something that was brand shiny new and a major development effort just a
few years ago would be discarded as a "hairball" that no one wants to maintain
anymore. I can understand how that can happen in a reasonable environment, but
it can also be a sign of a seriously flawed process.

~~~
nnethercote
Three years ago people didn't know that much about compiling JS really well.
They know a lot more now. The lessons learned from each JIT helps make the
next one better.

