Addressing Loops with Memoization

One of the most prevalent problems in building an Ajax or JavaScript based application is the number of codes a developer have to inject in an application. As applications grow complicated with more services and highly interactive UIs, more coding has to be added.

Although this is a good thing since it provides additional functions to the application, there is an increasing concern that the application may not live up according to expectations.

The codes could be too complicated and there are too many factors at hand that will affect the application. From the browser to the user’s bandwidth, a complicated application may not be efficient when one of the many factors is jeopardized.

The Looping Problem

Complicating the coding even further for JavaScript is the possibility of looping. There are two scenarios in looping that could be problematic for an Ajax based application. First; when there is too many loops and second; there are too many functions in a loop.

The first problem could be easily created by any developer who hopes to build an efficient application while the second looping problem is inadvertently created because a single function within a loop may not be worth it.

When looping in an Ajax application is not controlled, the application could constantly requests for updates to the client side. Through constant requests, other active functions may not be executed since the server and the client side have to deal with the looping function first. The continuous data request is feasible but only if you expect consistent data but when there is no new data expected from looping, something should be done to control them.

Memoization as Solution

Memoization is probably one of the earliest theories in computation and programming. But it has evolved into something more powerful as it tries to address certain problems in programming.

With memoization, developers are not just making some changes on the coding but actually the core of what they are developing. Although there will be no changes in JavaScript itself, the coding will be radically changed especially when you are considering memoization.

The idea of memoization is to cancel the continuing loop in your JavaScript functions by dividing them into groups. You can separate the functions and just proceed to building it through regular coding.

However, this could be a problem since you need to loop in order to achieve the function you need. This is where the memoization technique is used. When memoization is implemented, the results of the functions are cached so that no new requests will be made.

Memoization is still a simple function but it will greatly help your application especially when you are having trouble dealing with loops. Manually coding them today is a little bit challenging but the effort to be used in memoization some of the loops are worth it. Few libraries today have memoization functions to address this concern in JavaScript functions. Hopefully, more developers will notice the advantages of memoization and add this helpful function so that better Ajax applications could be built.