Object descriptor getter/setter performance in recent Chrome/V8 versions

Question

Given

var obj = {};

var _a = 1;

obj._a = 1;

obj.aGetter = function() {
  return _a;
}

obj.aSetter = function(val) {
  _a = val;
}

Object.defineProperty(         


        

Answer 1

The changes in performance are relevant to this Chromium issue (credits go to @VyacheslavEgorov).

To avoid performance issues, a prototype should be used instead. This is one of few reasons why singleton classes may be used to instantiate an object once.

With ES5:

var _a = 1;

function Obj() {}

Object.defineProperty(Obj.prototype, 'a', {
  enumerable: true,
  get: function () {
    return _a;  
  },
  set: function(val) {
    _a = val;
  }     
});

var obj = new Obj();
// or
var obj = Object.create(Obj.prototype);

Or with ES6 syntactic sugar:

class Obj {
  constructor() {
    this._a = 1;
  }

  get a() {
    return this._a;
  }

  set a(val) {
    this._a = val;
  }     
}

let obj = new Obj();