15 replies

1. james 32 min later

   @zachleat The old one was a React SPA running inside a webkit-based browser! One of the reasons it's so slow is because they turned off JIT JavaScript compilation for security reasons ":)

   1. Zach Leatherman 34 min later

      @jaames oh dang, how do you know this? I’d love another source!

      1. Colin 44 min later

         @zachleat @jaames I discovered this too a while back, and it helped me understand why it was so excruciating to use https://html5experts.jp/shumpei-shiraishi/24538/

         1. Zach Leatherman 49 min later

            @colingourlay awesome, thank you!!

      2. james 57 min later

         @zachleat Nintendo did a talk at an AWS conference a couple years back where they went into some of the stack!
         https://aws.amazon.com/ko/awstv/watch/34fbecfb62e/

         The WebKit/JIT part is from personal experimentation and I can't find a reliable third-party source unfortunately. I used to do Switch dev at a prev employer before switching (haha) to frontend, the same browser applet can be called generically from a game, so I spent a lot of time poking at it. Quite a few Switch games use it for in-game manuals actually!!

2. Zach Leatherman 48 min later

   Well — it was React: https://html5experts.jp/shumpei-shiraishi/24538/

   (warning: translation autogenerated by Google)

   (thanks @colingourlay and @jaames!)

   1. Cory Birdsong 54 min later

      @zachleat WELL, i wonder why the Switch’s ~2016-era mobile SOC had trouble with it :pika:

      1. Zach Leatherman 57 min later

         @cbirdsong it was/is so excruciatingly slow on my Switch in 2025 😭

         1. Aleš Roubíček 7 hr later

            @zachleat @cbirdsong in the bright side, you don't (hopefully) spend so much on games :)

   2. blturner 1 hr later

      @zachleat @colingourlay @jaames absolutely unsurprising given how sluggish the animations on the menu transitions are

   3. Yoshi's Story 🦖💚 1 hr later

      @zachleat Huh no wonder it's super laggy, If I recall correctly the og switch doesn't allow JIT compilation (which modern browsers use to optimize js performance) & doesn't react use a ton of javascript?

   4. jake lazaroff 2 hr later

      @zachleat @colingourlay @jaames any idea what the new stack uses 👀

   5. Levi Beach 2 hr later

      @zachleat @colingourlay @jaames this… explains so much 😣

   6. Andrew Douglass 4 hr later

      @zachleat I’m just glad the games weren’t written in react.

   7. alexanderadam 13 hr later

      @zachleat /CC @marcoroth