You might know it as "dead code stripping": You remove all the things from the image that aren't used in your shipping app.

Calling it "tree shaking" is web development term AFAIK.

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munificent 11 hours ago | parent [-]

> Calling it "tree shaking" is web development term AFAIK.

I think that's backwards. Lars Bak and the other V8 folks came from the Smalltalk world and brought the "tree shaking" term with them as far as I know.

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layer8 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Wikipedia claims that it originated in Lisp, and the oldest reference I can find is this from 1991: https://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/LispGoodNewsBadNews.pdf (section 1.6.3)

In any case, before the JavaScript usage, it seems that treeshaking applied to objects to be included in a runtime image. The JavaScript usage is actually more akin to the dead-code elimination and link-time symbol removal of compiled and linked languages.

	▲	nielsbot 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Interesting. It's come full circle terminology wise.