2026-01-21
[12:10:14.0671] <Steve Hicks>
In light of today's discussion about kickstarting the conversation here, I just wanted to mention that as someone who owns an optimizer, we have a vested interest in moving people away from prototype methods and toward standalone functions, which can be optimized a lot more reliably.  I don't have strong feelings about whether it's hack-style or F#-style, or what the topic token should be (though do I feel bad trying to use pure punctuation due to the amount of syntax space it eats up to treat (a sequence of) non-identifier chars as an identifier).  But if we could start shifting patterns toward functions over methods, that would be a win for optimized code size.

[12:10:41.0867] <Steve Hicks>
* In light of today's discussion about kickstarting the conversation here, I just wanted to mention that as someone who owns an optimizer, we have a vested interest in moving people away from prototype methods and toward standalone functions, which can be optimized a lot more reliably.  I don't have strong feelings about whether it's hack-style or F#-style, or what the topic token should be (though I do feel bad trying to use pure punctuation due to the amount of syntax space it eats up to treat (a sequence of) non-identifier chars as an identifier).  But if we could start shifting patterns toward functions over methods, that would be a win for optimized code size.

[14:05:17.0361] <ljharb>
glad to hear it, that would be a win for code clarity and maintainability too