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The Benefits of Optimizing JavaScript
JavaScript can feel slower than it should sometimes, and the main reason is usually unoptimized code. Over time, I’ve picked up a few tricks to make things run faster, and I’ll share some of those here.
But let’s be real — optimization isn’t always simple. It’s often a tradeoff between speed and making your code easy to read. When to focus on performance versus readability? That’s a call you’ll need to make based on what works best for your project.
But before we go to the point, here’s one golden rule: benchmark everything. Don’t waste hours speeding up a piece of code if it barely affects the overall performance. The first step to optimizing is figuring out where the real slowdowns are.
Avoid string comparisons
JavaScript uses a method similar to strcmp(a,b) in C to compare strings, but you don’t directly see it. Behind the scenes, JavaScript compares each character in one string to each character in another. The time it takes to compare strings depends on their length, which makes the process take O(n) time.
A common mistake in JavaScript is using strings as enums (like "apple", "banana" for categories). However, with TypeScript, this is easier to avoid because enum types in TypeScript are integers by default, making them faster and more efficient.
