Evolving JavaScript Code to Reduce Load Time

Abstract

JavaScript is one of the most used programming languages for front-end development of Web applications. The increase in complexity of front-end features brings concerns about performance, especially the load and execution time of JavaScript code. In this paper, we propose an evolutionary program improvement technique to reduce the size of JavaScript programs and, therefore, the time required to load and execute them in Web applications. To guide the development of this technique, we performed an experimental study to characterize the patches applied to JavaScript programs to reduce their size while keeping the functionality required to pass all test cases in their test suites. We applied this technique to 19 JavaScript programs varying from 92 to 15,602 LOC and observed reductions from 0.2 to 73.8 percent of the original code, as well as a relationship between the quality of a program's test suite and the ability to reduce the size of its source code.