I mean, sure, that's probably heavily influenced by the need for bundling for the frontend.

But it isn't done blindly. Bundlers reduce the overall size of the code, either due to minification or tree-shaking (removing unused modules). It also removes the filesystem overhead of resolving and opening other modules.

Would bundling be useful in other interpreted languages?

I suppose you may count JVM's compilation to bytecode as being very similar.

  • JackbyDevEnglish
    1•10 months ago

    I guess it boils down to if bundling can improve execution speed. On the web it would make page loads quicker.

    • CyclohexaneOP
      1•10 months ago

      In nodejs, at least, it does. The minification and tree-shaking can make code significantly smaller. This can mean smaller cold start time in AWS Lambda for example, or just overall a little less RAM. If your heap isn't that large, that can be noticeable.

      It also eliminates the filesystem overhead of resolving and loading modules.