Selecting a scripting engine – Part 4.

This is the fourth installment in the series (here are 1, 2, and 3) and this time it was the turn of Javascript. Yes I know a lot of buzz has been going on about the sudden jump in speed of the scripting language, thanks to the introduction of the blazingly fast V8 and, yes an even faster SquirrelFish Extreme (SFX) engines (oh and not to forget Mozilla’s Tracemonkey). Javascript has been at the back of my mind and I have been fiddling around with Javascript for some time now. I had actually tried out Javascript as a scripting language earlier for a completely different project altogether, but that prototype was left on the back-burner since there were more pressing issues to solve. Then, of course, I left the project and the experiment didn’t get beyond the prototyping phase. Too bad really. That was the time when Javascript was pretty slow, or should I say slower than it is today. However the story with the new generation Javascript engines is very different from the old ones. Most engines compile Javascript code to “fast native code” on the platform they run on, and that’s the reason for the sudden spike in speed. According to the SFX blog, SFX goes a step further and does something the call as “polymorphic inline cache” (explained on the link provided above) which they claim to be a exciting new optimization. I haven’t taken SFX for a ride yet, but I have had a peek at V8 and I must say I am more than impressed by Google’s implementation.

If you haven’t already guessed by now, my main interest in any scripting language is obviously an integration with our Game engine (, code named O2 Engine). From my previous posts it’s pretty clear; I am on a quest for an elusive perfect solution. A please all, perfect scripting language (, which I know I will not find). Unfortunately ideal solutions are impossible and most of the times it’s a compromise between what is available and/or what you can afford with the resources you have. With Javascript things are no different. All kinds of remarks have been made about the scripting language. Everything from, “Javascript is the worst language ever!”,  to “Javascript: The world’s most misunderstood language.” Google around and you will see what I mean. But there are two sides to every story. While most programmers who work with stricter languages frown upon Javascript, the fact remains, Javascript is easy to understand than most other languages. It is used by programmers and non-programmers alike and is used by countless web-sites to deliver Internet content.

Javascript’s shares it’s syntax to some extent with C and Java, but the similarities end there. It is not a very “strict” language and this is in fact by design and is actually intentional. Less strictness means non-programmers can adapt to the language more easily. Javascript is probably the least strict language among most other languages I have used. This can be good and bad, but while considering a scripting language, I can probably live with that given the rapid prototyping capabilities it offers. If you look at the language itself, Javascript shares most of the common properties found in other scripting languages (Lua, Python and others). The interesting thing about Javascript is the function-object duality the language proposes. This can be confusing for a programmer working on a language that uses an imperative approach (something like C++ or Java), maybe not so if you started out with Javascript or already know functional programming. However the thing that is really interesting is the fact that functions are first class citizens under Javascript. This concept itself is not something that is unique to Javascript, Lua has similar concept too and both languages can be used for functional (style) programming. Inheritance under Javascript is prototype based which is again similar to how Lua implements inheritance, but is different from the classical inheritance that defines object-oriented languages like C++ and Java. I don’t see any particular problem with that, given that there is a way to export class hierarchy.

Integrating or embedding Javascript with an application is no different than what it is for most other scripting languages. I found Google’s V8 code to be the easiest and cleanest to understand and integrate among all other languages/embedding libraries I have encountered. However, the entire process can be extremely repetitive and time consuming if a large library/classes/functions have to exported. Again, this is no different for most other scripting languages (except maybe Python, where you have an automatic process). I haven’t had time to look at SFX and TraceMonkey yet, but I am sure the process should be similar.

So what is special about Javascript? If you consider the language and the embedding platform/technique, nothing actually. Head-to-head it’s probably equivalent to Lua or any other embeddable scripting language out there. However, what sets Javascript apart from the rest of the pack today is actually mentioned in the first paragraph of this article. Yes,  it’s the new generation of scripting engines from Mozilla, Google and the Webkit team. They give a huge advantage to Javascript in terms of speed and performance. JIT compilation to native code and the optimizations that have been introduced, do result in significant increase in speed of the script code that is being executed.

I know most game developers (incuding myself) are performance junkies, but hold on there before you jump in and start integrating Javascript into your favourite game engine. There are some points here worth noting. For native code compilation to work, the Javascript compiler needs an assembler to convert the compiled code to native code instructions. So on platforms for which the Javascript compiler has no assembler, you are basically out of luck. V8 has assemblers for Intel and ARM as of now. So for any other architecture the V8 engine will be of no help, unless that is, you implement a version of the in-built assembler for that platform yourself. I am not too sure how this will scale to platforms like the PS3 and XBox and could very well be a sticking point. The other thing that caught my attention is that JIT compilation to native code means Javascript code has be distributed as plain text files. Such code could be subject to manipulation and a potential cause for concern if your code has to adhere to security specifications.

That said, given the fact that so much RnD is going into Javascript, makes the language a top contender for the post of a scripting engine.

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