Compilers
I felt a little out of depth trying to follow along more closely JavaScript optimizations from last week; I started taking a look at compilers to develop a bit more background.
Compilers was the first class I signed up for at Bradfield. I remember Oz described how fortunate we were as developers to have the ability to work at a higher level (libraries, frameworks) as well as at a lower levels (compilers). In light of that, the syllabus started with the following quote by Ras Bodik.
Take historical note of textile and steel industries: do you want to build machines and tools, or do you want to operate those machines?
Alas I discovered on Day 1 how it's more helpful to cover computer architecture first; I dropped compilers for that course instead. I went on to do all the core CS classes at Bradfield... except compilers. The class at the time had the Dragon book as the main text. This may have switched to Crafting Interpreters by Bob Nystrom (available for free online), which has an excerpt I find particularly endearing.
The book itself is filled with quotes, and why not, let's inspire ourselves with this one by Donald Knuth.It’s the book I wish I had when I first started getting into languages, and it’s the book I’ve been writing in my head for nearly a decade.
If you find that you’re spending almost all your time on theory, start turning some attention to practical things; it will improve your theories. If you find that you’re spending almost all your time on practice, start turning some attention to theoretical things; it will improve your practice.
How the browser works
Running microbenchmarks led me down the path of JavaScript engines but also browsers in general. The mental model of the browser that I found helpful separates the browser UI, called the chrome, from the browser engine.
Let's split the browser engine into two parts. The first part 'talks to the internet' - starts with the URL, finds the remote server, and gets the desired HTML payload i.e. HTML/CSS/JS. The second part converts the HTML/CSS/JS into what you see and interact with in the browser.
I followed along in Python the series by Matt Brubeck on building a toy HTML/CSS rendering engine. This involves parsing the HTML/CSS text into tree-like objects that the computer understands, which are then processed and rendered visually.
I also came across a post describing how Google created V8 because Google Maps had been running really slowly, and getting Google Maps to run fast helps Google sell more ads. Perhaps. On the flip side, Google Maps is a fantastic product, V8 led to Node, and the need for speed led to network innovations like SPDY and QUIC.