Discussion on: Daily Challenge #287 - 16+18=214

Thanks, that's a fair point. Here's the tweaked code:

function piecewiseAdd_numeric(addendA: number, addendB: number) : number {
  let sum = 0, cursor = 1;
  while (addendA || addendB) {
    const digitSum = (addendA % 10) + (addendB % 10);
    sum += cursor * digitSum;
    cursor *= digitSum < 10 ? 10 : 100;
    addendA = Math.floor(addendA / 10);
    addendB = Math.floor(addendB / 10);
  }
  return sum;
}

Benchmark here -- numeric method has it by a nose most of the time you run it, sometimes a bit more. For smaller inputs they're pretty much even.

In C or Rust or something closer to the metal Mihail's post is definitely the way to go (imo).
In JS strings are pretty quick and numbers are surprisingly slow to deal with (there's no support for integers, etc) and I find the language doesn't really reward that kind of close-knit optimization, so I felt it wasn't worth the additional complication.