Objects are similar to Maps in that both let you set keys to values, retrieve those values, delete keys, and detect whether something is stored at a key. Due to this reason, Objects have been used as Maps historically. But there are important differences that make using a Map preferable in certain cases.
- The keys of an Object are Strings and Symbols, whereas they can be any value for a Map, including functions, objects, and any primitive.
- The keys in Map are ordered while keys added to Object are not. Thus, when iterating over it, a Map object returns keys in order of insertion.
- You can get the size of a Map easily with the size property, while the number of properties in an Object must be determined manually.
- A Map is an iterable and can thus be directly iterated, whereas iterating over an Object requires obtaining its keys in some fashion and iterating over them.
- An Object has a prototype, so there are default keys in the map that could collide with your keys if you're not careful. As of ES5 this can be bypassed by using map = Object.create(null), but this is seldom done.
- A Map may perform better in scenarios involving frequent addition and removal of key pairs.
