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I think the main reason that it's a best practice for people to minify their JavaScript files is for a smaller download size for the client. With a smaller download size, the page is able to utilize JavaScript at an earlier point and be ready for the user to interact with the page. Minifying and gzipping JavaScript yields a greatly smaller file size than without either. Big win for performance.

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While it is true that in practice, the size benefit of both compressing and minifying is optimal, the LZ77 algorithm is nearly the same as a minification algorithm, so running both has only marginal benefit.

Just checking: are you saying that minifying and gzipping is better than gzipping alone? Where better means smaller downloads for the client?

I read that to mean that gzip / deflate was nearly as effective, and so there was not much reason to minify if you were already compressing.

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