Re: Shrinking existing libraries as a goal

On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 9:32 PM, Yehuda Katz <wycats@gmail.com> wrote:
> In the past year or so, I've participated in a number of threads that were
> implicitly about adding features to browsers that would shrink the size of
> existing libraries.
>
> Inevitably, those discussions end up litigating whether making it easier for
> jQuery (or some other library) to do the task is a good idea in the first
> place.
>
> While those discussions are extremely useful, I feel it would be useful for
> a group to focus on proposals that would shrink the size of existing
> libraries with the implicit assumption that it was a good idea.
>
> From some basic experimentation I've personally done with the jQuery
> codebase, I feel that such a group could rather quickly identify enough
> areas to make a much smaller version of jQuery that ran on modern browsers
> plausible. I also think that having data to support or refute that assertion
> would be useful, as it's often made casually in meta-discussions.
>
> If there is a strong reason that people feel that a focused effort to
> identify ways to shrink existing popular libraries in new browsers would be
> a bad idea, I'd be very interested to hear it.

I think it's a great idea. Shipping less code over the wire seems like
a win from any perspective.

I support a focused effort like this. I know some folks will be
hesitant to embrace it out of the "tail-wag-dog" fears that the
unfortunate patterns in scripting libraries will result in misguided
changes to the platform. My answer to this is: let's do research first
and see what proposed changes come up.

:DG<

>
> Thanks so much for your consideration,
>
> Yehuda Katz
> jQuery Foundation
> (ph) 718.877.1325

Received on Wednesday, 16 May 2012 16:54:44 UTC