Why is mutating the [[prototype]] of an object bad for performance?

Question

From the MDN docs for the standard setPrototypeOf function as well as the non-standard __proto__ property:

Mutating the [[Prototype]] of an object, no matter how this is accomplished, is strongly discouraged, because it is very slow and unavoidably slows down subsequent execution in modern JavaScript implementations.

Using Function.prototype to add properties is the way to add member functions to javascript classes. Then as the following shows:

function Foo(){}
function bar(){}

var foo = new Foo();

// This is bad: 
//foo.__proto__.bar = bar;

// But this is okay
Foo.prototype.bar = bar;

// Both cause this to be true: 
console.log(foo.__proto__.bar == bar); // true

Why is foo.__proto__.bar = bar; bad? If its bad isn't Foo.prototype.bar = bar; just as bad?

Then why this warning: it is very slow and unavoidably slows down subsequent execution in modern JavaScript implementations. Surely Foo.prototype.bar = bar; is not that bad.

Update Perhaps by mutation they meant reassignment. See accepted answer.

Answer 1

// This is bad: 
//foo.__proto__.bar = bar;

// But this is okay
Foo.prototype.bar = bar;

No. Both are doing the same thing (as foo.__proto__ === Foo.prototype), and both are fine. They're just creating a bar property on the Object.getPrototypeOf(foo) object.

What the statement refers to is assigning to the __proto__ property itself:

function Employee() {}
var fred = new Employee();

// Assign a new object to __proto__
fred.__proto__ = Object.prototype;
// Or equally:
Object.setPrototypeOf(fred, Object.prototype);

The warning at the Object.prototype page goes into more detail:

Mutating the [[Prototype]] of an object is, by the nature of how modern JavaScript engines optimize property accesses, a very slow operation

They simply state that changing the prototype chain of an already existing object kills optimisations. Instead, you're supposed to create a new object with a different prototype chain via Object.create().

I couldn't find an explicit reference, but if we consider how V8's hidden classes are implemented, we can see what might go on here. When changing the prototype chain of an object, its internal type changes - it does not simply become a subclass like when adding a property, but is completely swapped. It means that all property lookup optimisations are flushed, and precompiled code will need to be discarded. Or it simply falls back to non-optimized code.

Some notable quotes:

• Brendan Eich (you know him) said

  Writable __proto__ is a giant pain to implement (must serialize to cycle-check) and it creates all sorts of type-confusion hazards.

• Brian Hackett (Mozilla) said:

  Allowing scripts to mutate the prototype of pretty much any object makes it harder to reason about the behavior of a script and makes VM, JIT, and analysis implementation more complex and buggier. Type inference has had several bugs due to mutable __proto__ and cannot maintain several desirable invariants because of this feature (i.e. 'type sets contain all the possible type objects which can realized for a var/property' and 'JSFunctions have types which are also functions').

• Jeff Walden said:

  Prototype mutation after creation, with its erratic performance destabilization, and the impact upon proxies and [[SetInheritance]]

• Erik Corry (Google) said:

  I don't expect big performance gains from making proto non-overwritable. In non-optimized code you have to check the prototype chain in case the prototype objects (not their identity) have been changed. In the case of optimized code you can fall back to nonoptimized code if someone writes to proto. So it wouldn't make all that much difference, at least in V8-Crankshaft.

• Eric Faust (Mozilla) said

  When you set __proto__, not only are you ruining any chances you may have had for future optimizations from Ion on that object, but you also force the engine to go crawling around to all the other pieces of type inference (information about function return values, or property values, perhaps) which think they know about this object and tell them not to make many assumptions either, which involves further deoptimization and perhaps invalidation of existing jitcode.
  Changing the prototype of an object in the middle of execution is really a nasty sledgehammer, and the only way we have to keep from being wrong is to play it safe, but safe is slow.