Understanding the V8 JavaScript Engine

JavaScript is cool (don't @ me), but how can a machine actually understand the code you've written? As JavaScript devs, we usually don't have to deal with compilers ourselves. In this talk, I’ll use visualizations to show you how the JavaScript engine handles our human-friendly code, and compiles it to code that machines understand.

Presenter: Lydia Hallie
Event: Reactathon 2020

[ahmedhamdy]

I just love these moments of learning when I feel so stupid and my mind feels like oh, we've some work to do.

[kelkiiii]

These infographics are really great. Excited to keep studying this. Gonna use this as a resource frequently. Very well-done.

[arik_dev]

I've been reading through the V8 dev blogs trying to get a sense of what's going on, and this video really tied the concepts together in a succinct way. Excellent use of graphics as well, really helpful.

[ludmfgx]

The animation was not only cool but also incredibly helpful in visualizing the complexities of the engine. It's rare to find content that's both beginner-friendly and easy to follow, but this video nailed it. Thankyou so much!

[satadrubhatt]

Thanks for the talk and explaining in details. Always liked the visual articles. Kudos

[benoitleger-derville]

This is exactly the video and explanation I've always wanted to see. Thank you.

[VincentJenks]

Excellent illustration! These are key fundamental concepts all JS devs should understand, so as to optimize as much as possible. It takes some of the guesswork out of how you should solve a particular problem, also...seeing as JS is flexible enough to do everything at least 10 different ways. Well done!

[AndreGreeff]

wow... over 20 years of writing JS and I'm still learning new things. definitely going to keep this in mind when designing my functions.

[cingizhemidov]

best info-graphics and explanation I have seen on this very important topic. Thank you

[VincentDegrave]

Great way of explaining the internals. Thanks!

[ryanpark]

Lydia~ thank you so much for your wonderful presentation!! You are so much better than Udemy instructor who explains about JS engine. Now finally I can understand how JS works perfectly !!! Thank you so much again !!

[codeChuck]

Deep! And fun 🔥! Turbofan :)
After watching this video I remembered that I have learned about this V8 optimization previously, but I forgot about this completely when writing actual code!
Nice reminded that calls to function with different arguments or different shape of object are blocking V8 turbofan optimization.

[daniel]

The best explanation i have ever seen!!!

[tigokyu]

perfect. a sua didatica e perfeita, junto dos graficos

[mumblic]

Maybe the people behind the v8 engine deserve a Nobel price of some kind.
Code optimization at that low level is really complex and the v8 engine seems to be highly optimized.

[gorkemokur]

It's a fascinating and informative presentation. Can i ask how did you make slides. I mean, did you use some program or actually, is it a website =)

[achillesglacia]

bloody hell. the ease of that to her is just... For extra beginners will like a complete summarised road map at the beginning before going into each section and function, if that makes any sense, glad to help. you did that, but it was too short, too quick.

[paulsery]

Very helpful! Where does Chromium load scripts before byte stream decoding?

[MinorMood]

Well - the part that really broke my brain was that gear animation on 4:42 ))) There is definitely something wrong there!))
Aside from that - a great video, thanks a lot!)

[roycreativedesigner]

the animation and explanations were helpful....but the cool thing was she was laughing after some seconds and that made ma laugh watched it twice once just to laugh and another time for learning the concept