Are you simply being tongue-in-cheek, or is this a valid concern (=value of binary AST actually being disputed)? Honest Q! 
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I’m not convinced that Binary AST pays for itself, given all the optimizations that JavaScript engines and browsers can implement without introducing a brand new format. Main thread parse cost is no longer a bottleneck.
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I'm a bit confused; I don't see any tests vs BinaryAST in that article; can you link one please? Though I think I get the gist; parsing is faster in V8 than it was before.
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It’s not just that raw parse speeds are faster than ever before, but also that we can avoid unnecessary parsing in many cases. Add script streaming and off-main-thread parsing+compilation to that, and parse+compile cost is not the bottleneck anymore.
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feels like we should be on the same side. we want to give you that scope info up front for free!
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Except it won't necessarily be what an engine needs. Now we have multiple formats to support, that reduces engine freedom and optimization opportunities. The new format can expose capabilities by accident that the old format cannot, possibly breaking optimizations.
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It still seems like Binary AST would be a win for all sorts of other use cases though, like embedded devices.
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JavaScript, HTML, CSS, HTTP, performance, security, Bash, Unicode, i18n, macOS.
As it turns out, NOT parsing is faster than parsing.
That’s why JavaScript engines implement a preparser which enables lazy parsing and compilation. Here’s how that works in V8: