This is a great point. And I wouldn't disagree with you on any level. I will only point out what may not have been clear in my original post: When you're writing JavaScript for the browser, the preeminent measure of "performance" is time. Now of course, that can vary wildly on a machine-by-machine (or browser-by-browser) basis. But the generic end-user's perception of time is what typically dictates whether my code is seen as "performant".
Of course JavaScript is "sluggish". In fact, all interpreted languages are. Because they are, as you've pointed out, "farther from the metal". But when I'm writing web-based apps, in JavaScript, the "metric" by which my code is typically judged is: Does the end-user actually perceive any type of delay? If the page/app seems to load/function in a near-instant fashion, I'm not going to waste time arguing with someone over the CPU benchmark performance of one function versus another.
But again, I totally agree with your points here.
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This is a great point. And I wouldn't disagree with you on any level. I will only point out what may not have been clear in my original post: When you're writing JavaScript for the browser, the preeminent measure of "performance" is time. Now of course, that can vary wildly on a machine-by-machine (or browser-by-browser) basis. But the generic end-user's perception of time is what typically dictates whether my code is seen as "performant".
Of course JavaScript is "sluggish". In fact, all interpreted languages are. Because they are, as you've pointed out, "farther from the metal". But when I'm writing web-based apps, in JavaScript, the "metric" by which my code is typically judged is: Does the end-user actually perceive any type of delay? If the page/app seems to load/function in a near-instant fashion, I'm not going to waste time arguing with someone over the CPU benchmark performance of one function versus another.
But again, I totally agree with your points here.