Faster than C? Parsing binary data in JavaScript.
I am <i>extremely</i> doubtful that optimized C is going to be equally performant as optimized JavaScript. There is innate overhead when using an interpreted language, no matter how advanced the interpreter. JavaScript is also garbage collected, while C is not, adding an additional level of overhead.<p>At no point in this article are we shown the code of this new parser. We are also told that is incomplete. So we have a parser which we can't see and which is not finished, but apparently dominates its C counterpart in performance. This leads to me to believe one of two things:<p>1. The parser isn't complete, and its unimplemented functionality is going to be more expensive in terms of performance than the author anticipated, thus rendering his preliminary results void.<p>2. The implementation of the C extension he is comparing against is not very well optimized. As said above, I find it <i>very</i> hard to believe that well optimized C is going to be beaten by well optimized JavaScript.