Add zero-sleep execution with debounced rendering (#12)

languages/execution-controller.ts

@@ -7,6 +7,8 @@ import {
   WorkerRuntimeError,
 } from "./worker-errors";
 
+const FORCE_SLEEP_INTERVAL_MS = 10;
+
 type ExecuteAllArgs<RS> = {
   /** Interval between two execution steps, in milliseconds */
   interval: number;
@@ -143,12 +145,27 @@ class ExecutionController<RS> {
     this._isPaused = false;
 
     return new Promise(async (resolve, reject) => {
+      let lastSleepTime = performance.now();
+
       while (true) {
         try {
           const doBreak = this.runExecLoopIteration();
           onResult(this._result!);
           if (doBreak) break;
-          await this.sleep(interval);
+
+          /**
+           * The event loop causes sleep to add quite a bit of overhead. But sleep is
+           * required for allowing other message handlers to be run during execution.
+           * So for interval=0, as a middle ground, we sleep after every X ms.
+           */
+
+          const shouldSleep =
+            interval > 0 ||
+            performance.now() - lastSleepTime > FORCE_SLEEP_INTERVAL_MS;
+          if (shouldSleep) {
+            await this.sleep(interval);
+            lastSleepTime = performance.now();
+          }
         } catch (error) {
           if (isRuntimeError(error)) {
             this._isPaused = true;

ui/execution-controls.tsx

@@ -38,7 +38,7 @@ const IntervalInput = (props: {
   return (
     <div style={styles.inputWrapper}>
       <NumericInput
-        min={5}
+        min={0}
         stepSize={5}
         defaultValue={20}
         minorStepSize={null}

ui/renderer-wrapper.tsx

@@ -1,6 +1,8 @@
 import React from "react";
 import { LanguageProvider } from "../languages/types";
 
+const RENDER_INTERVAL_MS = 50;
+
 export interface RendererRef<RS> {
   /** Update runtime state to renderer */
   updateState: (state: RS | null) => void;
@@ -9,19 +11,46 @@ export interface RendererRef<RS> {
 /**
  * React component that acts as an imperatively controller wrapper
  * around the actual language renderer. This is to pull renderer state updates
- * outside of Mainframe for performance reasons.
+ * outside of Mainframe and debouncing rerenders for performance reasons.
  */
 const RendererWrapperComponent = <RS extends {}>(
   { renderer }: { renderer: LanguageProvider<RS>["Renderer"] },
   ref: React.Ref<RendererRef<RS>>
 ) => {
-  const [state, setState] = React.useState<RS | null>(null);
+  const [renderedState, setRenderedState] = React.useState<RS | null>(null);
 
-  React.useImperativeHandle(ref, () => ({
+  /**
-    updateState: setState,
+   * Re-rendering on each state update becomes a bottleneck for running code at high speed.
-  }));
+   * The main browser thread will take too much time handling each message and the message queue
+   * will pile up, leading to very visible delay in actions like pause and stop.
+   *
+   * To avoid this, we do some debouncing here. We only truly re-render at every X ms: on
+   * other updates we just store the latest state in a ref.
+   */
 
-  return renderer({ state });
+  // Timer for re-rendering with the latest state
+  const debounceTimerRef = React.useRef<NodeJS.Timeout | null>(null);
+  // Ref to store the very latest state, that may be rendered upto X ms later
+  const latestState = React.useRef<RS | null>(null);
+
+  /**
+   * Update the current renderer state. Debounces re-render by default,
+   * pass `immediate` as true to immediately re-render with the given state.
+   */
+  const updateState = (state: RS | null) => {
+    latestState.current = state;
+    if (debounceTimerRef.current) return; // Timeout will automatically render liveState
+
+    // Set a timer to re-render with the latest result after X ms
+    debounceTimerRef.current = setTimeout(() => {
+      setRenderedState(latestState.current);
+      debounceTimerRef.current = null;
+    }, RENDER_INTERVAL_MS);
+  };
+
+  React.useImperativeHandle(ref, () => ({ updateState }));
+
+  return renderer({ state: renderedState });
 };
 
 export const RendererWrapper = React.forwardRef(RendererWrapperComponent);