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The JavaScript Midlife Crisis

56 points · 75 comments · maroun-baydoun

  1. suplexer · · focus · HN ↗
    To all reasonable software developers out there, please don't listen to the prevailing groupthink. Javascript (the language) has many semantic problems but speed (from the VM) is one of it's best features! Like, you have to be writing some questionable code in very questionable styles/dialects to have a 10x (or more!) slowdown vs native.

    Obviously - using native non-portable language/compiler features - you can reach some worthwhile speedup for certain workloads. But I have yet to see any of these "we rewrote our build system to Rust" type blog posts utilize any them.

    It's always the apples-to-oranges marketing style drivel. Just because the some assertion comes from a very (very!) large company or well-known community member doesn't mean it is true.

    In all my years of lurking this site, this port mortem is one of the few articles on this topic I trust: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;zaplib.com&#x2F;docs&#x2F;blog_post_mortem.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;zaplib.com&#x2F;docs&#x2F;blog_post_mortem.html

    This argument can also be applied to the separate, startup time performance axis. Though there are more tradeoffs there.

    1. cisc · · focus · HN ↗
      Porting the TypeScript toolchain to Go made it 10 times faster:

      <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;devblogs.microsoft.com&#x2F;typescript&#x2F;typescript-native-port&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;devblogs.microsoft.com&#x2F;typescript&#x2F;typescript-native-...

      1. pjmlp · · focus · HN ↗
        Following by porting the CoPilot Runtime from TypeScript to Rust.

        <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theregister.com&#x2F;devops&#x2F;2026&#x2F;09&#x2F;18&#x2F;microsoft-agentically-ports-copilot-runtime-to-rust-for-120k&#x2F;5297549" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theregister.com&#x2F;devops&#x2F;2026&#x2F;09&#x2F;18&#x2F;microsoft-agen...

        1. suplexer · · focus · HN ↗
          I bet if you took the AI-generated Rust codebase and another 120k to reverse it right back to Typescript you&#x27;d get keep most of that same speed up!
          1. cisc · · focus · HN ↗
            But why bother when you already have the speed up? And why didn&#x27;t TypeScript deliver it in the first place?
            1. suplexer · · focus · HN ↗
              I don&#x27;t mean to say you should, I just wanna stress that it&#x27;s important to be critical of claims others make without evidence.

              Anyone can claim anything is true!

              &quot;But why bother when you already have the speed up? And why didn&#x27;t TypeScript deliver it in the first place?&quot;

              That&#x27;s a question for them.

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