Why is pop faster than shift?

Question

Douglas Crockford, in JavaScript: The Good Parts, states that \"shift is usually much slower than pop\". jsPerf confirms this. Does anyone know why this is the case

Answer 1

The difference can be negligible—Unoptimized executors may run shift much slower than pop, but optimized ones won't.

You can optimize like this:

let WrapArray = _=>{
  //Ensure no other ref to `_`.

  let numlike = _=>isNaN(_)?false:true
  let num = _=>Number(_)
  {
    let shift_q = 0
    return new Proxy(_, {
      get(first_t, k){
        switch(k){
          case 'shift': return (z={})=>(z.r=first_t[0 + shift_q], delete first_t[0 + shift_q++], z.r)
          break; case 'length': return first_t.length - shift_q
          break; default: return first_t[numlike(k)?num(k) +/*todo overflowguard*/shift_q:k]
        }
      },
      set(first_t, k, v){
        switch(k){
          case 'length': first_t.length = v + shift_q
          break; default: first_t[numlike(k)?num(k) +/*todo overflowguard*/shift_q:k] = v
        }
      }, 
      has(first_t, k){
        return (numlike(k)?num(k) +/*todo overflowguard*/shift_q:k) in first_t
      },
      deleteProperty(first_t, k){
        delete first_t[numlike(k)?num(k) +/*todo overflowguard*/shift_q:k];return 543
      },
      apply(first_t, t, s){
        first_t.call(t, s)
      },
      construct(first_t, s, t){
        new first_t(...s)
      },
    })
  }
}
(_=WrapArray(['a','b','c'])).shift()
console.log(_.length/*2*/, _[0]/*b*/, _[1]/*c*/, _[2]/*undefined*/)