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How Long Should a Function Be? (And Why It’s the Wrong Question to Ask)
(adamtornhill.substack.com)
this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2026
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Programming
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Agreed, optimize it. Where it matters. Reducing the number of functions to save space on the stack when the heap has 99% of the data is nonsense.
@eager_eagle
I'm talking about the *code* wasting memory. In JavaScript each function is a heap object and its source code is another heap object. Even if a JIT compiler inlines them, the original non-inlined functions keep sitting there wasting perfectly good bytes.
and again, you end up sacrificing readability to address what, a fraction of a percent in memory use? If that matters in your program, maybe don't use JS.