Are arrow functions faster (more performant, lighter) than ordinary standalone function declaration in v8?

javascript node.js v8
Alexander Myshov picture Alexander Myshov · May 17, 2017 · Viewed 15k times · Source

I am asking this question because I and my colleague have a dispute on coding style because he prefers arrows function declaration:

const sum = (a, b) => a + b;

And I prefer old-style standalone function declaration:

function sum(a, b) {
    return a + b;
}

My point is that code in old-style more readable and you can more clearly distinguish function and variable declarations. His point is that code with arrow functions just run faster.

Do you know something about actual performance penalties (in v8) when you use old-style standalone function declaration instead of arrow functions? Are that penalties really exists?

Answer

jmrk picture jmrk · May 17, 2017

V8 developer here. Arrow functions are (mostly) just "syntactic sugar" for conventional function declarations. There is no performance difference.

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