Optimization Coaching for JavaScript

Abstract

The performance of dynamic object-oriented programming languages such as JavaScript depends heavily on highly optimizing just-in-time compilers. Such compilers, like all compilers, can silently fall back to generating conservative, low-performance code during optimization. As a result, programmers may inadvertently cause performance issues on users’ systems by making seemingly inoensive changes to programs. This paper shows how to solve the problem of silent optimization failures. It specifically explains how to create a so-called optimization coach for an object-oriented just-in-time-compiled programming language. The development and evaluation build on the SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine, but the results should generalize to a variety of similar platforms.