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Re:What does “asm.js optimizations” mean? by rinon on Wednesday February 18, 2015 @04:26PM (#9071056)
Coming from the compiler side of things, you're sacrificing in usability to make it possible for the JIT compiler to optimize the code further. If you allocate all memory ahead-of-time, the GC never needs to operate on that region, which gives you substantial performance improvements.

This is definitely a trade-off, but it's my understanding that asm.js makes more sense as a target for compilers to emit code for, rather than for hand-writing. Would you hand write an entire application in x86 assembly? Probably not...

Re:What does “asm.js optimizations” mean? by CJefferson on Wednesday February 18, 2015 @04:52PM (#9071203)
Couldn't the JIT provide me a way of allocating new blocks of memory? and freeing blocks of memory back to the 'OS'? At least allocating new blocks?

I don't mind no GC, but having to allocate the maximum memory your program will use before it starts can be painful.