3 HN users recommended this talk3 months2012–2025score 3
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
Recommended as a classic JavaScript performance talk whose fundamentals about reflow and efficient code still apply.
A 2009 Google Tech Talk by Nicholas Zakas on the hidden performance pitfalls of JavaScript. It covers what is fast and slow in the language and how to avoid common bottlenecks.
“the fundamental ideas are still the same.” (HN, 2025)
The only other video that sticks out in mine head is this Google Tech Talk by Nicholas Zakas about javascript performance. [this video] Besides videos, check out Javascript Garden: [link] Javascript Weblog: [link] Here are some links over on Quora: [link] The three books worth getting for someone who is already a programmer are: Crockford's "Javascript: The Good Parts", Stoyan Stefanov's "Javascript Patterns", and Resigs's "Secrets of the Javascript Ninja" IMHO, there are few videos worthwhile.
Classics John Resig : The Dom is a mess [link] Javascript, The Good Parts [link] Speed up your Javascript [this video] Brendan Eich : Fluent 2013: Brendan Eich, "JavaScript at 18: Legal to Gamble" [link] Paul Irish : 10 things I learned from the Jquery source [link] Less known but very interesting Building High-Performing JavaScript for Modern Engines [link]
You need to think about what the browser is actually doing when it displays a web page. You need to think about what happens when you type the URL in and what the browser is doing conceptually. If you have any experience programming 2D graphics with SDL this will help you to understand what is happening as well. There is an old school talk by Nikolas Zakas on JavaScript Performance from 2009 which while some of it is out of date now due to improvements in Browser engines, the fundamental ideas are still the same. [this video] If you skip to the 35 minute mark he speaks about reflow specifically. Generally I still use many of these techniques when writing vanilla JS (which is unfortunately rare these days). There are other talks where he talks about many other performance specific topics. Obviously none of this is as good as real world experience of dealing with a thorny issue.
Old talk with still-valid fundamentals on reflow and performance.
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