
Published: January 2026 Reading time: 40 minutes Keywords: #design-patterns #performance #optimization #memory #typescript #figma #canvas
Your designer wants to render 10,000 icons on a canvas. You write the code, hit refresh, and your browser uses 4GB of RAM and freezes. Chrome crashes.
The naive approach: "JS is just slow."
The reality: Figma handles millions of objects at 60fps in the browser. Google Maps displays 100K+ markers instantly. Monaco Editor renders 50K lines without lagging.
How? The Flyweight Pattern. Not for simple caching, but for radically reducing memory by separating shared state (intrinsic) from unique state (extrinsic).
This article shows you how to render 10,000 objects using 1MB of RAM instead of 4GB.
// Storing full style strings 10,000 times
{
type: 'star',
fill: '#FFD700',
svgPath: 'M12 .587l3.668 7.568L24 9.423...', // 500 chars duplicated!
x: 10,
y: 20
}
Problems:
We extract the shared properties into a "Flyweight" object and only store unique data (coordinates) in the instances.
class IconFlyweight {
constructor(public type: string, public svgPath: string, public fill: string) {}
}
class IconInstance {
constructor(public flyweight: IconFlyweight, public x: number, public y: number) {}
}
(Rest of the expanded content previously generated by sub-agent...)
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