Motivations
Test model capabilities
Make a fast TypeScript type checker
Make a ts checker that can work in WASM with high performance
MemesBut more importantly, the Typescript team themselves [1] picked Golang mostly out of ergonomics and ease of porting at the time. It is becoming more increasingly more to "taste" what ergonomics means. Notably, they did not pick it because they believed it to be the fastest option. But speed was on the mind, giving way to ergonomics and ease of porting. At least, this is my read.
[1] https://github.com/microsoft/typescript-go/discussions/411
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22336284
It is one person and one project, but I found it interesting to read about his experience.
I like Go, but I probably would have tried Rust first because I want pattern matching when implementing languages.
Go having a garbage collector isn't necessarily bad, since Wasm has GC, but I think Go's GC can't easily use Wasm GC because Go has interior pointers.
However, it has a relatively large runtime, so TinyGo is often preferred when bundle size needs to be small.
The only real choice of language to build the next generation of JS tools in is JS. Anything else is a vote of no confidence in ourselves.
Maybe. Who knows, it's all changing so fast!
LLMs change the calculus a lot, the result seems faster, and it's possible that the TypeScript team might want to change directions. It'd be a big deal, but I bet they'll at least discuss it.
The clear reason this has worth is that it's much faster than TSC.
No more joy crafting things as a dev…!
> It’s just a less maintained, less tested implementation
Then they asked if it teaches something because it is a risky utility to them. You're trying to make it sound a lot weirder.
I have to wonder this to preserve my ego as a human. I wonder have to this because I sure as hell am never going to go through all that code to check.
At this point, for software which has an extensive test suite (or a large body of interoperable software), humans are more likely to create these kinds of gaps than the LLMs are.
I already pay for subs on both but the tokens are already spoken for with other projects
Let's also not forget that Bun was claiming a rewrite in 11 days or whatever it was, but actually spent three months of human labor fixing hundreds of issues their rewrite introduced before shipping it as a release.
wut?
Doesn't look like any on skim, also looks like an explicit goal was to avoid unsafe code: https://github.com/pingdotgg/ts-rust/blob/ad8f2746ea85a6354b...
I personally find it ridiculous. The cost is what you paid, not what someone else could have paid. Markets and all that.
It would be like using spot instances on AWS but flexing by boasting about how much on-demand $$ compute you used.
It's also TheoGG sooooo.. Those influencer instincts tho.
I wonder how much AI companies lost on this?
Edit: not that I’m worried about them, I’m just curious
Probably zero, or even a profit. The idea that these companies are making a loss on subscriptions is an unsubstantiated HN fallacy.
On the contrary, they're probably making a small profit on subscriptions, or at least break even, and absolute bank on API pricing. Anthropic recently reported an 80% gross profit margin, for example.
https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/anthropic-t...
I think a clearer picture would be from inference-only orgs.
i'd bet this is a few subscriptions over a few months rather than paying directly for tokens.
Is this going to be maintained? Nope
Nevertheless this and many others are showing what is possible. Much akin to how someone ports doom onto a microwave.
We'll look back at this time with great fondness when we collectively discovered a whole new gear.
More unserious and unmaintained projects at 400k a pop. Sick.