Except it doesn't make sense if the JS code expands to a number of machine instructions that would take longer to transfer over the network than the transfer and parsing of the JS code combined.
How about minified JS? What would be the best? Consider the massive amount of machine (or even IR) code that each identifier, built-in function, loop, switch and all other "syntax sugar" aka high-level-language-construct represents..
Could well be, depending on the app, dunno.. it's still the case that on the whole practically almost each lexeme in a high-level language expands into a giant ball of opcodes.. ;)
"We're" (many) already doing that too via gzipped responses (faster to decompress than to compress == neat for web uses). That's my point, a higher language is already "compressing" machine representation (all abstractions kinda do), minification turns its lengthy identifiers into minimal "codes", then the gzip.
