On: Towards a JavaScript Binary AST

[Yoric]

On our sample, x0.95 for minified code (so that's a 5% improvement) and ~x0.3 for non-minified code.

As usual, read these numbers with a pinch of salt, they are bound to change many times before we are done.

[malts → Yoric]

Does BinJS perform AST transforms like `!0` to `true` which would be shorter in binary AST encoding? Or does it faithfully model the original code?

[Yoric → malts]

It faithfully models the original code. The idea is that if you want to transform `!0` to `true`, or if you want to obfuscate, etc. you can always plug an additional tool.

[malts → Yoric]

The 5% gains over minified code are impressive given that BinJS performs no AST manipulation.

The BinJS prototype will be written in pure javascript I assume to speed its adoption?

[Yoric → malts]

For the moment, it's JS + Rust, because Rust is better than JS when you keep refactoring Big Hairy Data Structures. However, once the data structures stabilize we're planning to shift it entirely to JS.