Optimization: wasted calls to view in mainLoop

[jagare]

Currently the onMessage function in the mainLoop calls view(model) to create a new virtual dom given the new model after update is called see Platform.js. This virtual dom is scheduled for rendering @ rAF. However several more messages might be processed before rAF and then all but the last virtual dom created will be just waste. A more optimized way would be to post the updated model to the renderer (i.e. calling renderer.update) for lazy call of view to produce a new virtual dom just in time to produce the diff and patchset to be applied in updateIfNeeded.

[evancz]

It is not actually 100% clear that this would be faster in general. This means more work is pushed into the requestAnimationFrame phase, so it could conceivably take a bit longer and miss the time frame. This is assuming you have one event per frame though. If things get crazy and there are tons of events, this will certainly save work, but still maybe at suboptimal times.

So it's not so obvious this will be faster! That said, the version of virtual-dom I have going with 0.18 will be using this approach because it has architectural benefits. In any case, I don't think it makes sense to track it here. Benchmarks should be done.

[evancz]

It is not actually 100% clear that this would be faster in general. This means more work is pushed into the requestAnimationFrame phase, so it could conceivably take a bit longer and miss the time frame. This is assuming you have one event per frame though. If things get crazy and there are tons of events, this will certainly save work, but still maybe at suboptimal times.

So it's not so obvious this will be faster! That said, the version of virtual-dom I have going with 0.18 will be using this approach because it has architectural benefits. In any case, I don't think it makes sense to track it here. Benchmarks should be done.