So Elsas own comparison[1] says that the binary size difference is 20MB Elsa (QJS) vs 44MB Deno (V8). Looking at QuickJS benchmark[2] V8 is 28M vs 1M QJS, so Elsa adds 19M on top of the engine vs 16M for Deno. Doesn't feel that lightweight anymore
It is amusing how each of us define our own _lightweight_, for me it is the size and readability of the code. Others it is the magnitude of the executable bytes. To someone else it might mean the startup time, the number of dependencies or the build/test/debug iteration time.
The only reasonable application of "minimal" is for it to be a cross-cutting description. To describe something as "minimal" without qualification while focusing only on any single quality is not a good use of the term.
Software that achieves my goal in a focused manner is something i typically enjoy. I don't want it to do everything under the sun, i want it to do one or two things well.
These days, to me, a "lightweight" alternative to Dropbox would be one that focuses on filesharing with none of that other junk.
There are foundational aspects on knowing a component is done, that it will be the same everywhere. What do you think of Nix [1]?
The other quality of flexible composable systems is that they can be extended with something akin to an AoP system. Non-essential qualities can be woven and applied during composition so that each component doesn't have to implement various features.
A counter example is the find command, it has to implement a predicate language into the tool itself. If it omitted typed objects, a filter engine could select the subset. If find implemented polymorphic values, the predicate would dictate what facets were populated in the structures themselves but our shells don't work that way. A metashell that could define its environment and the streams of structures flowing between components could get us closer to a pervasively composable mode of system construction.
Unix pipelines [2] are awesome, but they aren't the pinnacle. I feel like all of us fall short in creating systems that compose. Most (scalable) systems should be fractal, while most composition is limited to a narrow first-order mode of operation.
That was surprising to me, too. For me the big benefit of QuickJS is the tiny runtime size. If that isn't a factor you might as well go for V8, the performance is an order of magnitude better.
[1] https://github.com/elsaland/elsa/blob/master/COMPARISON.md
[2] https://bellard.org/quickjs/bench.html