Continuing our series on the secrets Microsoft does not want you to know about Volta, we want to touch on a topic that is apparent to anyone who has tried using the Word Worm sample.

Secret #2: Performance

Many people that try to run the samples from the Volta website correctly observe that the performance and especially the load time of these samples is sub-optimal. To allow people to play with our samples from the website, the easiest way currently is to deploy these samples as JavaScript since it does not require any installation. The downside of this approach is that for this preview release we did not not optimize for performance, but instead concentrated on providing developers with an end-to-end view of Volta such that we could get valuable feedback about the Volta programming model.

Building an MSIL to JavaScript compiler that generates more efficient code than human programmers can write by hand is a tractable problem and one we are working on for future versions of Volta. This is exactly what the goal of a good compiler is; raise the level of abstraction and at the same time boost performance of the generated code. However, though we know how to improve performance and intend to do so in future iterations the goal of this release was not performance. Instead, we are seeking feedback on aspects of Volta that we do not know exist. In other words by putting Volta in the hands of developers early on, we are hoping to find some unexpected Black Swans. 

So, experiment with Volta, tell us what works and what doesn't--but keep in mind that performance of applications compiled to JavaScript is not yet optimized.