How comparing things is faster and simpler with immutability

This post was part of a series that I later improved and consolidated. I recommend checking the updated version.

In the previous post of the series, I wrote about the nature of value and reference data types, and the differences between shallow and deep operations. In particular, the fact that we need to rely on deep operations to compare things is a major source of complexity in our codebases. But we can do better.

Comparing mutable structures

When working with mutable data structures, things like determining whether an object has been changed or not is not so simple:

var film = {
    'title': 'Piratees of the Caribean',
    'released': 2003
};
// At some point, we receive an object and one of its properties
// might have changed. But how do we know?
newFilm = doSomething( film );
film === newFilm; // What does a shallow equality yield?

If we are allowed to mutate objects, although film and newFilm identifiers are equal, the payload might have been updated: a shallow equality check won’t suffice, we’ll need to perform a deep equality operation with the original object to know.

Comparing immutable structures

In JavaScript, primitives (numbers, strings, …) are immutable, and reference data types (object, arrays, …) are not. But if mutable structures are the reason why comparing things is difficult, what would happen if we worked with reference data types as if they were immutable?

Let’s see how this would work:

If something changes, instead of mutating the original object, we’ll create a new one with the adequate properties. As the new and the old object will have different identifiers, a shallow equality check will set them apart.

var film = {
    'title': 'Piratees of the Caribean',
    'released': 2003
};
var doSomeThing = function( film ) {
    // ...
    return Object.assign(
        {},
        film,
        {'title': 'The curse of the Black Pearl'}
    );
}
var newFilm = doSomething( film );
film === newFilm; // false

If nothing changes, we’ll return the same object. Because the identifier is the same, the shallow equality check will yield true.

var film = {
    'title': 'Piratees of the Caribean',
    'released': 2003
};
var doSomeThing = function( film ) {
    // ...
    return film;
}
var newFilm = doSomething( film );
film === newFilm; // true

It is easier to tell what have changed when reference data types are immutable because we can leverage the shallow equality operations.

As a side-effect, it takes less effort to build a whole lot of systems that depend on calculating differences: undo/redo operations, memoization and cache invalidation, state machines, frameworks to build interfaces with the immediate mode paradigm, etc.

Coda

One of the reasons I started this series of posts was to explain how using immutable reference data types was one of the tricks at the core of Redux and React. Their success is teaching us a valuable lesson: immutability and pure functions are the core ideas of the current cycle of building applications – being the separation between API and interface the dominant idea of the previous cycle.

I have already mentioned this some time ago, but, at the time, I wasn’t fully aware of how quick these ideas will spread to other areas of the industry or how that will force us to gain a deeper understanding of language fundamentals.

I’m glad they did because I believe that investing in core concepts is what really matters to stay relevant and make smart decisions in the long term.


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